[Footnote 1:  July, 1885, p. 211, in the course of the article to which I have already alluded.]

On the other hand, some writers (claiming to derive their argument from the Scriptures) have supposed they could assert three distinct natures in man—­a spiritual, a mental (or psychic), and a bodily.  Now there is no doubt that, rightly or wrongly (I am not now concerned with that), the Bible does distinctly assert that a “breath of lives” [1] was specially put into the bodily form of man, and adds that thereby “man became a living soul.”  But it is also stated of the animal creation that the breath of life was given to them,[2] and animals are said to have a “soul” (nephesh).[3] So that neither in the one case nor the other have we more than the two elements:  a body, and a life put into it; though of course the man’s “life” (as the plural indicates, and other texts explain) was higher in kind than that of the animal.

[Footnote 1:  The plural of excellence appears to mark something superior in the spirit of man over that of the animals.  Also compare Job xxxiii. 4, “The breath of the Almighty hath given me life,” with Isa. xlii. 5 and Zech. xii. 1.]

[Footnote 2:  Though not in the plural of excellence.  See Gen. vi 17, vii. 22, &c.]

[Footnote 3:  Gen. i. 20, margin of A.V.]

St. Paul, it is true, speaks of the “whole spirit, and soul, and body.[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.  And as we cannot connect the higher reasoning, and, above all, conscience and the religious belief, as a “property” of physical structure, we conclude that the Scripture only asserts facts when it attributes both to the soul, as a spiritual