Note 9 — REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Footnote 9

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It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is manifested, towards the near approach of death, an almost insane brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary glimmerings of a maniac's mind have been adduced for precisely the same purpose.