old age, and in the full vigour of youth a sudden injury to the
brain might forever destroy the intellect of a Plato or a Shakspeare.
But the third principle,--the soul,--the something lodged within the
body, which yet was to survive it? Where was that soul hidden out of
the ken of the anatomist? When philosophers attempted to define it, were
they not compelled to confound its nature and its actions with those
of the mind? Could they reduce it to the mere moral sense, varying
according to education, circumstances, and physical constitution? But
even the moral sense in the most virtuous of men may be swept away by
a fever. Such at the time I now speak of were the views I held,--views
certainly not original nor pleasing; but I cherished them with as fond a
tenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of which I was the
first discoverer. I was intolerant to those who maintained opposite
doctrines,--despised them as irrational, or disliked them as
insincere. Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my ambition
predicted,--become the founder of a new school in pathology, and summed
up my theories in academical lectures,--I should have added another
authority, however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the interest
of man to the life that has its close in his grave.

Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was more
nourished than I should have been willing to grant by the self-reliance
which an unusual degree of physical power is apt to bestow. Nature had
blessed me with the thews of an athlete. Among the hardy youths of
the Northern Athens I had been preeminently distinguished for feats
of activity and strength. My mental labours, and the anxiety which
is inseparable from the conscientious responsibilities of the medical
profession, kept my health below the par of keen enjoyment, but had in
no way diminished my rare muscular force. I walked through the crowd
with the firm step and lofty crest of the mailed knight of old, who
felt himself, in his casement of iron, a match against numbers. Thus the
sense of a robust individuality, strong alike in disciplined reason
and animal vigour, habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself,
contributed to render me imperious in will and arrogant in opinion. Nor
were such defects injurious to me in my profession; on the contrary,
aided as they were by a calm manner, and a presence not without that
kind of dignity which is the livery of self-esteem, they