of

Materialism, as I have repeatedly said, and I hope not unsatisfactorily proved, is repugnant to the sober sense of man. Yet who can pretend to demonstrate immateriality? We have no medium by which we can judge of the state and properties of material substances, but by the senses : in like manner, we have no other medium, whereby we can judge of the state and properties of the soul, than by an attention to its operations in ourselves, of which we have the consciousness. As our senses make no report the inward constituent principles of matter, so our consciousness gives us no information, concerning the essence or state of our souls, independently of its operations: but, by observing its internal and external operations, and by comparing them together, we are able to attain some degree of important knowledge. Thus, whenever I seek external objects with my eyes, my fingers, or the organs of hearing, I not only discover the properties of these bodies, and judge of them accordingly; but, I judge there is a principle in me which takes cognizance of the external object, and that this principle is of a different nature from the object observed, and from the sense or instrument by which it is observed. Whenever I feel an agreeable or disagreeable sensation, I have a consciousness of

3

the

the particular kind and degree of either, and I immediately judge that the sentient principle in me is different from the organ in which sensation is placed. Thus, when I write, walk, or speak, I know what I do, and I conclude that the operative principle is distinct from the instrumental and passive. Further, when I attend to the operation and desires of my mind, though they be excited by external objects, I perceive I can dwell on them, change them, send my thoughts abroad, recall them, &c. I am conscious my mind desires or shews things, which appear good or bad, true or false; but that these affections are made by a principle different from the brain and nerves, through whose medium these affections are excited.

As I have said above, however, no one who believes this comfortable tenet, can explain the incomprehensible union of mind and matter. But the union is not impossible; nor is a similar union inconsistent with a much higher, or even with the highest degree of mental faculties: nor does the incarnation of an aon, or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits, involve any contradiction or absurdity.* terialism is, in short, untenable.

Ma

And I say

so, not because it appears to me disastrous, and fraught with danger and mischief to society, but, because it is contrary to the clearest evidence of my senses.

But here arises another question, and of no little magnitude; Is there any necessary connec tion between the immateriality and the immortality of the soul? To prove this last, is it sufficient to shew that the soul, in quality of an indivisible substance, is incapable of decomposition? The death of a thinking being would appear to consist in the privation of ideas. We do not know that our minds had any ideas before we were born; neither can we say that they will, after we are corporeally deceased. One point is indeed clear to us, and that is, that in our present forms we are incapable of knowing with certainty whether the soul shall, after the dissolution of the body, remember its former. state, or still continue to exercise its facul ties?

The hope of immortality, as derived from reason, has been founded on the nature of the soul. This nature of the soul, indeed, has in all ages eluded the researches of philosophy. Among the ancients, what singular and contra

dictory

dictory opinions! "Plato, dixit animam essentiam se moventem; Xenocratus, numerum se moventem; Aristotelis, intellectum seu motum perpetuum; Pythagoras et Philolaus, harmoniam; Posidonius, ideam; Asclepiades, quinque sensuum exercitium sibi consonum; Hippocrates, spiritum tenuem per omne corpus diffusum; Heraclitus Ponticus, lucem; Heraclitus Physicus, scintillam stellaris essentiæ; Zenon, concretum corpori spiritum; Democritus, spiritum insertum atomis; Critolaus Peripateticus, constare eam de quinta essentia; Hipparchus, ignem; Anaximenes, aëra; Empedocles et Critias, sanguinem ; Parmenides, ex terra et igne; Xenophanes, ex terra et aqua; Epicurus, speciem ex igne et aere et spiritu mistam."* The Bramins, still earlier, looked upon the soul as an emanation of the spirit of God, breathed into mortals; not as a portion, indeed, of the Divine Spirit. They compared it to the heat and light sent forth from the sun, which neither lessens nor divides its own immediate essence.

In the doctrines of the academy, we find that Platonists affirm, some souls to be of the nature of Saturn, others of Jupiter, and others of the nature of the other planets; thereby meaning, that our soul has more conformity in its texture

*Macrobius.

with

with the soul of the heaven of Saturn, than with that of Jupiter; and so on the contrary, of which no internal cause can be assigned. The external, say they, is God, who soweth and scattereth souls; some in the moon, and others in the other planets and stars, the instruments of time. * And hence the imagination, that the rational soul descending from her star, in her vebiculum cæleste, forms of herself the body, to which by that medium she is united. Plato, upon these grounds, also supposes, that into the vehiculum of the soul, (by her endued with power to form the body) is infused, from her star, a particular formative virtue, distinct, according to that star; and thus the aspect of one is saturnine; of another, amorous; and of a third, jovial, or fierce; the looks, indicating the nature of the soul.

Epicurus, perceiving the number of sensual men to exceed by far that of the more spiritual, laid the foundation of his system in sensual pleasures, and held a corporeal soul, the better to fit it for those corporeal pleasures; and then to secure this anima against those severe after-reckonings, the apprehension of which he perceived the God of Nature had implanted in the hearts of all

*Timæus.

men,"