CHAPTER IX
THE END—1796
In the last winter of his life Reid read an interesting discourse on 'Muscular Motion,' in the Literary Society, of which he so long had been a member. After describing articulately the progressive changes in the human muscles which mark the advance of age, and proposing an explanation, he thus concludes his last public discourse:—
'May I be permitted to mention that it was my own experience of some of these effects of old age on the muscular motions that led my thoughts to this explanation, which, as it is owing to the infirmities of age, will, I hope, be treated with the greater indulgence. It is both pleasant and useful to contemplate with gratitude the wisdom and goodness of the Author of our being, in fitting this machine of our body to the various employments and enjoyments of life. The structure is admirable as far as we are permitted to see it in this infancy of our being. And the internal structure which is behind the veil that limits our understanding, and which gives motion to the whole, is, in a manner most wonderful, though unknown to us, made subservient to our volition and efforts. This grand work of nature, like the fruits of the earth, has its maturity, its decay, and its dissolution. Like those also, in all its decay it nourishes a principle within which is to be the seed of a future existence. Were the fruit conscious of this, it would drop into the earth with pleasure, in the hope of a happy Resurrection. This hope, by the mercy of God, is given to all good men. It is the consolation of old age, and more than sufficient to make its infirmities sit light.'
The dissolution of the material organism which for eighty-
