Law revealed by God, who is the creator of the World, is fully in harmony with the laws of nature, which God himself has implanted in the World for its governance. Therefore, natural law has come to mean divinely revealed law. The questions that historians ask are limited only by their imagination and historical evidence left behind for them to study. We have seen how historians use different kinds of written evidence, such as household inventories, treaties, as well as material artifacts like tombstones and house designs. They also study visual evidence such as paintings and sculptures, for these, too, can provide insight into the life and culture of the past. With the proper mixture of care and ingenuity, historians can tease surprising amounts of information out of materials that at first glance seem silent and unrewarding. Paintings and pictures offer unique insights into the past. They can tell us about the development over time of artistic styles and techniques. They also offer a window into the past for social and cultural historians, for they reveal how people lived and looked and did their work, as well as what the landscape and home furnishing were like. “The greatest motive I have had for engaging in my pursuit of painting, has been the wish of commemorating the great events of our country’s revolution,” reports President Thomas Jefferson. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

During the revolutionary era and the early national period, American artists employed painting and other visual arts to record the great events of the nation’s founding. John Trumbull, for example, secured a commission from Congress in the early nineteenth century to prepare a series of historical canvasses. The best form of government is that based upon fixed law, not indeed upon humanmade fixed law, but upon a divinely revealed law. In a state governed by such a divinely revealed law, every individual has one’s primary allegiance to God and to the law revealed by God. Whatever human authority exists, whether secular, governing the relation of humans to God, that authority is derived from the law and functions only as an instrument of the application of the law and its interpretation. Such a state, whatever its external form of government, is really ruled by God, it is a theocracy. It is a special form of government in contradistinction to that of monarchy and aristocracy, but rather as a description of a special principle of government, namely, the principle of equality before the law, which may be adopted and practiced by any form of government. Although George Washington left the presidency in 1797 amid a storm of controversy, his death in 1799 generated a surge of public mourning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

During the first year following his death, countless sermons and eulogies celebrated President George Washington as the “Father of his Country,” a man first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country people. Everywhere people organized memorial processions and decked themselves out in black crepe, gold mourning rings, and funeral medals. In New York, New York USA, an enterprising bookseller named Mason Weems quickly published a best-selling biography of the great hero. Complete with invented accounts of the cherry tree episode and the story of President Washington throwing a stone across the Rappahannock River; Manson Weems’s book when through 80 profitable editions over the next 100 years. We shall accordingly leave aside puzzle stories of persons who seem to vanish and reappear or who seem to be reincarnations of someone dead and keep to the case of apparent bodily transfer. Let us take a story in which the servants in a royal palace waken a person who looks as if he is the prince, but who evinces complete bewilderment at his surroundings, utters memory claims befitting a cobbler, is astonished on looking into the mirror, and so on. At the same time a man who looks as if he is the cobbler produces princely reactions and memory claims and demands to be returned to the royal palace. What should we say? #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

There are certain criterion for reidentification of bodily identity. In order to set up any case at all, we have to know that there was actually a person in the past about whose life these memory claims seem to be accurate reports and that all the claims fit the life history of the same person in the past, who was the person the claimant now says he is. This can be known only if in the past we were able to reidentify that person over the period of his life. This requires the past availability of the criterion. However, when these admissions are made, the advocate of bodily transfer need go no further; he can still hold his ground and say that bodily transfer is still possible. If we had a case where the memory claims of the man who seemed to be the cobbler systematically fitted the past of the prince and vice versa, these claims could be checked up on in detail. And they would be found, ex hypothesi, to fit a past human body; the only difference from normal would be that the body uttering them. Yet the past of the body uttering them would itself be taken care of by a systematic set of memory claims now uttered by that body which they did not fit. In such circumstances it surely would be wholly natural to say that two men had exchanged bodies. The Apotheosis of Washington, painted by an anonymous artist after an 1802 engraving by John Barralet, shows how President Washington was mythologized during the years immediately following his death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

If we examine the painting carefully, for it is filled with a fascinating mixture of patriotic, religious, and cultural symbolism, we wonder why is President Washington depicted with his arms extended? Who is the woman standing at the left of the picture, and why are the children included? The bottom quarter of the picture is crowded with object and human forms, each of them carefully chosen for what it might contribute to the painting’s overall effect. Identify them and explain why they are there. Finally, why did the veneration of President Washington in word and image take place? In spite of much recent writing on the puzzles, there seems to be no satisfactory demonstration that the change in convention that would follow on our saying a transfer had occurred would lead to absurdities. It is therefore a possibility. The conclusion is, therefore, that although the logical possibility of bodily transfer has to be admitted, the implications are small and the wisdom of this particular change in our conventions is not self-evident. In no greater heroism would be called for here than would be called for by accepting that one person could exchange bodies or memories with another, and it would make it puzzling that people should remember their own past. It has already been argued that either of the possible conceptual changes would require that the cases of bodily transfer or the memory exchanges be rare; otherwise, we would not have the memory concepts we do have. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

Yet in order even to state the problem, we must use memory concepts. From the other side, we have to remember that if we were to adopt the device recommended, then in cases like the one of President Washington we would say of the characters not that they remembered but they retrocognized. By the grace of God some exceptional persons may be reborn in this manner. However, these types of cases are not usually taken too seriously in modern times because it could lead to identity theft, and the exploitation of people who are mouring. With the increase of technology, you never know how long predators have been eavesdropping and spying on their prey and what kind of information many thought was private has been breached. We could end up with a number of hysterical people pretending to be different people to obtain assets, wealth, information, and human capital. “Beware of false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing,” reports 3 Nephi 14.15 (Matthew 7.15). In light of the striking doctrine of bodily transfer, many seem to stick to the originating theory that the human soul is an attunement, and the body is the tomb of the soul. “God himself shall come down and bring to pass resurrection,” reports Mosiah 15.20. Faith in the revealed teachings of Scripture are benefits under what the philosophers call the virtue of justice. We are to serve God out of love and not out of expectation of reward. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6