Kou. But for a person serenely to consider himself before the Supreme Being without shame or disgust, what must he do? Cu-su. Be just. Kou. And what further? KOU. But LAOKIUm's sect says, there is no Κου. such thing as just or unjust, vice or virtue. CU-SU. And does LAOKIUM'S sect say there is no such thing as health nor sickness? Kou. No, to be sure; what egregious nonsense that would be! CU-SU. And let me tell you, that to think there is neither health nor sickness of soul, nor virtue nor vice, is as egregious an error, and much more mischievous. They who have advanced that every thing is alike, are monsters: is it alike, carefully to bring up a son, or, at his birth, to dash him against the stones; to relieve a mother, or to plunge a dagger into her heart? Kou. That is horrible! I detest LAOKIUM's sect; but just and unjust are oftentimes so interwoven, that one is at a loss. Who can be said precisely to know what is forbidden and what is allowed? Who can safely set limits to good and evil? I wish you would give me a sure rule for this important distinction. Cu-su. There can be no better than that of CONFUTZEE, my master," Live as thou wouldst "have lived when thou comest to die; use thy "neighbour as thou wouldst have him use thee.' Kou. Those maxims, I own, should be mankind's standing law. But what am I the better for my good life, when I come to die? What mighty advantage shall I get by my virtue? That clock goes as well as ever clock did; but when it comes to be worn out, or should it be destroyed by accident, will it be happy for having struck the hours regularly? Cu-su. That clock is without thought or feeling, and incapable of remorse, which you sharply feel on the commission of any crime. Kou. But what if by frequent crimes I come to be no longer sensible of remorse. Cu-su.. Then it is high time an end should be put to your being; and take my word for it, that, as men do not love to be oppressed, should that be the case, one or another would stop you in your career, and save you the committing any more crimes. Kou. At that rate God, who is in them, after allowing me to be wicked, would allow them likewise to be so. Cu-su. God has endued you with reason, neither you nor they are to make a wrong use of it; as otherwise you will not only be unhappy in this life, but how do you know but you may likewise be so in another? Kou. And who told you there is another life? CU-SU. The bare uncertainty of it should make you behave as if it was an undoubted certainty. Kou. But what if I am sure there is no such thing? Cu-su. That I defy you to make good. THIRD DIALOGUE. Kou. You urge me home, Cu-su; my being rewarded or punished after death, requires that something which feels and thinks in me, must continue to subsist after me; now as no part in me had any thought or sense before my birth, why should it after my death? What can this incomprehensible part of myself be? Will the humming of that bee continue after the end of its existence? Or the vegetation of this plant, when plucked up by the roots? Is not vegetation a word made use of to express the inexplicable mode appointed by the Supreme Being, for the plants imbibing the juices of the earth? So the soul is an invented word, faintly and obscurely denoting the spring of human life. All animals have a motion, and this ability to move is called active force; but this force is no distinct being whatever. We have passions, memory, and reason; but these passions, this memory, and reason, are surely not separate things, they are not beings existing in us, they are not diminutive persons of a particular existence, they are generical words invented to fix our ideas. Thus the soul itself, which signifies our memory, our reason, our passions, is only a bare word. Whence then motion in nature? from God. Whence vegetation in the plant? from God. Whence motion in animals? from God. Whence cogitation in man? from God'. Were the human soul a diminutive person, inclosed within our body, to direct its motions and ideas, would not that betray in the eternal Maker of the world an impotence and an artifice quite unworthy of him? He then must have been incapable of making automata, which shall have the gift of motion and thought in themselves. When I learned Greek under you, you made me read This opinion of the Chinese is the Pythagorean dogma of the "Anima Mundi," which has been fully refuted by Cudworth, Dr. Clarke, and several other learned divines. read Homer, where Vulcan appears to me an excellent smith, when he makes golden tripods, going of themselves to the council of the gods; but had this same Vulcan concealed within those tripods one of his boys, to make them move without being perceived, I should think him but a bungling cheat. Some low-thoughted dreamers have been charmed with the fancy of the planets being rolled along by genii, as something very grand and sublime; but God has not been reduced to such a paltry shift: in a word, wherefore put two springs to a work when one will do? That God can animate that so little known being which we call matter, you dare not deny; why then should he make use of another agent to animate it? Farther; what may that soul be which you are pleased to give to our body? From whence did it come? When did it come? Must the Creator of the universe be continually watching the copulation of men and women? closely observe the moment when a germ issues from a man's body and passes into that of a woman, and then quickly inject a soul into this germ? And if this germ dies, what becomes of its soul? either it must have been created ineffectually, or must wait another opportunity. This is really a strange employment for the Sovereign of the world; and it is not only on the copulation of the human species, that he must be continually intent, but must observe the like vigilance and celerity with all animals whatever; for, like us, they have memory, ideas, and passions; and if a soul be necessary for the formation of these sentiments, these ideas, these passions, passions, and this memory, God must be perpetually at work about souls for elephants and fleas, for fish and for bonzes. What ideas does such a notion give of the Architect of so many millions of worlds, thus obliged to be continually making invisible props for perpetuating his work? These are some, though a very small sample, of the reasons for questioning the soul's existence. Cu-su. You reason candidly; and such a virtuous turn of mind, even if mistaken, cannot but be agreeable to the Supreme Being. You may be in an error, but as you do not endeavour to deceive yourself, your error is excusable, But consider what you have proposed to me are only doubts, and melancholy doubts; listen to probabilities of a solacing nature: to be annihilated is dismal; hope then for life. A thought you know is not matter, nor has any affinity with it. Why then do you make such a difficulty of believing that God has put a divine principle into you, which being indissoluble, cannot be subject to death? Can you say that it is impossi ble that you should have a soul? No, certainly: and if it be possible that you have one, is it not also very probable? How can you reject so noble a system, and so necessary to mankind? Shall a few slender objections withhold your assent ? Kou. I would embrace this system with all my heart, on its being proved to me; but it is not in my power to believe without evidence. I am always struck with this grand idea, that God has made every thing, that he is every where, that he penetrates all things, and gives life and motion to all things; and if he is in all the parts of my being, as he is in all the parts of nature, |