ngs, from
gunpowder to your body and mine.

What? I can understand their helping to make gunpowder, because the
sulphur in it is often found round volcanos; and I know the story of the
brave Spaniard who, when his fellows wanted materials for gunpowder, had
himself lowered in a basket down the crater of a South American volcano,
and gathered sulphur for them off the burning cliffs: but how can
volcanos help to make me? Am I made of lava? Or is there lava in me?

My child, I did not say that volcanos helped to make you. I said that
they helped to make your body; which is a very different matter, as I beg
you to remember, now and always. Your body is no more you yourself than
the hoop which you trundle, or the pony which you ride. It is, like
them, your servant, your tool, your instrument, your organ, with which
you work: and a very useful, trusty, cunningly-contrived organ it is; and
therefore I advise you to make good use of it, for you are responsible
for it. But you yourself are not your body, or your brain, but something
else, which we call your soul, your spirit, your life. And that "you
yourself" would remain just the same if it were taken out of your body,
and put into the body of a bee, or of a lion, or any other body; or into
no body at all. At least so I believe; and so, I am happy to say, nine
hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people out
of every million have always believed, because they have used their human
instincts and their common sense, and have obeyed (without knowing it)
the warning of a great and good philosopher called Herder, that "The
organ is in no case the power which works by it;" which is as much as to
say, that the engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the
gardener.

There have always been, and always will be, a few people who cannot see
that. They think that a man's soul is part of his body, and that he
himself is not one thing, but a great number of things. They think that
his mind and character are only made up of all the thoughts, and
feelings, and recollections which have passed through his brain; and that
as his brain changes, he himself must change, and become another person,
and then another person again, continually. But do you not agree with
them: but keep in mind wise Herder's warning that you are not to
"confound the organ with the power," or the engine with the driver, or
your body with yourself: and then we will go on and consid