[1]" But our Lord Himself, in a very solemn passage (where it would
be most natural to expect the distinction, if it were absolute and
structural, to be noticed), speaks of the "soul and body" only.[2]
The fact is that we are only able to argue conclusively that, besides
the physical form, we have a non-material soul, or a self. And our Lord,
whose teaching was always eminently practical, went no further. We are
conscious of a "self"--something that remains, while the body
continually grows and changes.
There was in _Punch_, some time ago, a picture of an old grandfather,
with a little child looking at a marble bust representing a child. "Who
is that?" asks the little one; and the old man replies, "That is
grandfather when he was a little boy." "And who is it now?" rejoins the
child. One smiles at the picture, but in reality it conceals a very
important and a very pathetic truth. Nothing could well be greater than
the outward difference between the grey hairs and bowed figure and the
little cherub face; and yet there was a "self"--a soul, that remained
the same throughout. In Platonic language, while the [Greek: eidolon]
perpetually changes, the [Greek: eidos] remains. We have, therefore,
evidence as positive as the nature of the subject admits that we are
right in speaking of the _body and the soul, or self_.
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