depend upon it. Though communicated to a certain organization of matter, they may be derived from another cause. The fire, in substances thrown into fusion by the rays of the sun, exists for the time in those substances, but does not depend on them. And if I might be indulged a small alteration in the form of the argument, I think the following conclusion would be the more natural and obvious. I find no such thing as sensation, perception, and thought, in any modification of matter, except one; and those qualities being exceedingly different from the known properties of matter, I conclude that though found in such system, they are not derived from any particular organization of matter, but from some other cause. In attraction and repulsion, do we see any advancement made towards thought? Shall we suppose the magnet thinks, any more than the stone which paves the street? *

Locke asks, whether the same self continues the same identical substance? The ground of the doubt, whether the same person be the same substance, is said to be this-that the consciousness of our own existence, in youth and in old age, or in any two joint successive moments, is

not the same individual consciousness, but different successive consciousnesses. It is strange this should have occasioned such perplexities: for it is surely conceiveable, that a person may have a capacity of knowing an object to be the same now, which it was when he contemplated it formerly. And thus, though the successive consciousnesses which we have of our own existence, are not the same, yet they are of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent. Some have carried this to an extraordinary length. Their notion is, that personality is not a permanent but a transient thing; that it lives and dies, begins and ends continually; that no one can any more remain one and the same person, two moments together, than two successive moments can be one and the same moment; that our substance is continually changing. But, even whether this be so or not, is, it seems, nothing to the purpose, since it is not substance, but consciousness alone, which constitutes personality; which consciousness being successive, cannot be the same in any two moments, nor consequently, the personality constituted by it. Whence it would follow, that it is a fallacy to charge our present selves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested

Bishop Butler.

interested in any thing which befel us, yesterday : or that our present selves will be interested in any thing which shall befal us to-morrow; since our present selves are not in reality the same with the selves of yesterday, but other like selves, or persons, coming in their room and mistaken for thein, to which other selves will succeed to-morrow. Some, indeed, concede so much as to allow, that the person is the same as far back as his remembrance reaches,

We have already lost, several times over, a great part, or perhaps the whole of our bodies, according to certain common established laws of nature; yet we remain the same living agents. When we shall lose as great a part, or the whole, by another common established law of nature, death, why may we not also remain the same? That the alteration has been gradual in one case, and in the other prompt, does not prove any thing to the contrary: we have passed undestroyed through these many and great revolutions of matter, so peculiarly appropriated to us, Why should we then imagine death will be so fatal? The dissolution of matter is clearly not the destruction of the living agent. But, all imagination of a daily change of that living agent, which each man calls himself, or of any such

B 4

such change throughout our whole present life, is entirely borne down by our natural sense of things. Nor is it possible for a person in his senses to alter his conduct, with regard to his health or affairs, from a suspicion, that though he should live to-morrow, he should not be, to-morrow, the same person he is to-day. The inexpressible absurdity of this notion every one must feel. *

any

But, although we are thus certain we are the same agents, living beings, or substances, now, which we were as far back as our remembrance reaches; yet, it is asked whether we may not possibly be deceived in this? The same question may be asked at the end of demonstration whatever, because it is a question concerning the truth of perception by memory. And he who can doubt, whether perception by memory can in this be depended on, may doubt also, whether perception by deduction and reasoning, which also include memory, or indeed, whether intuitive perception can. Here then we can go no farther; for it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove, than by other perceptions of exactly the same kind with them,

Bishop Butler.

them, and which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to establish the credit of our faculties, by means of those very suspected faculties themselves.

Credibile quia impossibile, is not in the disposition of all men. The opinion of the mortality of the thinking part of man, is thought by some to be unfavourable to morality and reli- ' gion; but without the least reason, says Priestley, for the common opinion of the soul of man surviving the body, was introduced into Christianity from the Oriental and Greek philosophy; it was discarded by Luther, and many other reformers in England and abroad. Can it be supposed, the Apostles, the primitive Fathers, and modern reformers, should all adopt an opinion unfavourable to morality? Their opinion unquestionably was, that whatever be the nature of the soul, its percipient and thinking powers cease at death. Even concerning the soul, we find nothing said by any Christian writer before Justin Martyr, who had been a Platonic philosopher, and who using their language, speaks of souls, as emanations from the Deity.But, in this point our learned author is in an error, for Polycarp, Clemens, and Ignatius, are more ancient writers than Justin; the two latter being contemporary with the Apostles, Peter and Paul;

• VOL. IV.