theological, and the moral.

There is a group of considerations drawn from the phenomena of our
bodily organization, life and death, which compose the
physiological argument for the separate existence of the soul. In
the first place, it is contended that the human organization, so
wondrously vitalized, developed, and ruled, could not have grown
up out of mere matter, but implies a pre existent mental entity, a
spiritual force or idea, which constituted the primeval impulse,
grouped around itself the organic conditions of our existence, and
constrained the material elements to the subsequent processes and
results, according to a prearranged plan.2 This dynamic agent,
this ontological cause, may naturally survive when the fleshly
organization which it has built around itself dissolves. Its
independence before the body began involves its independence after
the body is ended. Stahl has especially illustrated in physiology
this idea of an independent soul monad.

Secondly, as some potential being must have preceded our birth, to
assimilate and construct the physical system, so the great
phenomena attending our conscious life necessitate, both to our
instinctive apprehension and in our philosophical conviction, the
distinctive division of man into body and soul, tabernacle and
tenant. The illustrious Boerhaave wrote a valuable dissertation on
the distinction of the mind from the body, which is to be found
among his works. Every man knows that he dwells in the flesh but
is not flesh. He is a free, personal mind, occupying and using a
material body, but not identified with it. Ideas and passions of
purely immaterial origin pervade every nerve with terrific
intensity, and shake his encasing corporeity like an earthquake. A
thought, a sentiment, a fancy, may prostrate him as effectually as
a blow on his brain from a hammer. He wills to move a palsied
limb: the soul is unaffected by the paralysis, but the muscles
refuse to obey his volition: the distinction between the person
willing and the instrument to be wielded is unavoidable.

Thirdly, the fact of death itself irresistibly suggests the
duality of flesh and spirit. It is the removal of the energizing
mind that leaves the frame so empty and meaningless. Think of the
undreaming sleep of a corpse which dissolution is winding in its
chemical embrace. A moment ago that hand was uplifted to clasp
yours, intelligent accents were vocal on those

1 Wohlfarth, Triumph des Glauben