disorders in the meantime which, in such a world as ours, cannot fail to arise in particular instances, when they are compared with our natural sense of good and of ill desert, afford a presumption that in a future state the moral government which we see begun here will be carried into complete execution.

CHAPTER FOURTH.

PRELIMINARY INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL RELIGION.

OF A FUTURE STATE.

THE consideration of the Divine attributes naturally leads our thoughts to the future prospects of man, and to the sequel of that plan of moral government which we see plainly begun here, and which our own moral constitution, joined to our conclusions concerning the perfections of God, afford us the strongest intimations will be more completely unfolded in some subsequent stage of our being. The doctrine indeed of a future state seems to be in a great measure implied in every system of religious belief; for why were we rendered capable of elevating our thoughts to the Deity, if all our hopes are to terminate here? Or why were we furnished with powers which range through the infinity of space and time, if our lot is to be the same with that of the beasts which perish? But although the doctrine of a future state be implied in every scheme of religion, the truths of religion are not necessarily implied in the doctrine of a future state. Even absolute atheism does not destroy all the arguments for the immortality of the soul. Whether it be owing to an overruling intelligence or not, it is a fact which no man can deny, that there are general laws which regulate the course of human affairs, and that even in this world we see manifest indications of a connexion between virtue and happiness. Why may not necessity continue that existence it at first gave birth to; and why may not the connexion between virtue and happiness subsist for ever?

SECTION I.

Of the Argument for a Future State derived from the Nature of Mind.

In collecting the various presumptions which the light of nature affords for a future state, too much stress has commonly been laid on the soul's immateriality.* After having proved, or attempted to prove, that it has no quality in common with matter; in particular, that it is not extended or divisible, the advocates for this opinion have concluded, with all the confidence of demonstration, that what is not compounded nor made up of parts cannot be dissolved, and, therefore, that the human soul is essentially and necessarily immortal. "Et cum simplex natura animi esset, neque haberet in se quidquam admistum dispar sui, atque dissimile, non posse eum dividi; quod si non possit, non posse interire." +

But this argument, I am afraid, supposing it were logical, proves too much; for it concludes as strongly against the possibility of the soul's being created as dissolved; and accordingly, we find that almost all the ancient philosophers who believed in a future state maintained also the doctrine of the soul's preexistence. Nay, some of them seem to have considered the latter point as still better established than the former. In the Phadon of Plato, in which Socrates is introduced as stating to his friends, immediately before his execution, the proofs of a future state, Cebes, who is one of the speakers in the dialogue, admits that he has been successful in establishing the doctrine of the soul's preexistence, but insists on further proofs of the possibility of its surviving the body.

When we consider, however, with attention the argu

* On this point I quite agree with Locke. "All the great ends of morality and religion are well enough secured without philosophical proof of the soul's immateriality; since it is evident, that He who made us at the beginning to subsist here, sensible intelligent beings, and for several years continued us in such a state, can restore us to the like state of sensibility in another world, and make us capable there to receive the retribution he has designed to men, according to their doings in this life," &c. &c.-See the Chapter of his Essay, on the Extent of Human Knowledge.-Locke's Works, Vol. II. p. 332.

Cicero De Senectute, 21.

ment from the soul's immateriality in favor of its immortality, it appears to be by no means conclusive; for although we have the strongest evidence (as I shall afterwards show) that there is a thinking and sentient principle within 'us essentially distinct from matter, yet we have no direct evidence from the fact, of the possibility of this principle exercising its various faculties and powers in a separate state from the body. On the contrary, the union between the two, while it subsists, is evidently of the most intimate nature. We have reason to believe that, in the exercise of all the intellectual powers, the soul acts somehow or other on the body; for we find that when we have long been exerting any particular faculty we are conscious of fatigue, and are relieved by giving the mind some other species of employment. We know, too, from what happens in consequence of intoxication, madness, and other diseases, that a certain condition of the body is necessary to the intellectual operations; and the same thing appears from the gradual decay of the faculties as we approach to old age. This last fact is indeed not universal. We meet with some old men who retain their faculties unimpaired to the last; and others cut off in the vigor of life, who have displayed the usual force of their understandings under the pressure of some disease which was in a few moments to terminate their existence. But surely the more common fact is, that the body and mind seem to decay together; and the few exceptions that occur only prove that there are some diseases fatal to life which do not injure those parts of the body with which the intellectual operations are more immediately

connected.

I would not be understood by these observations to give the smallest countenance to the scheme of materialism; a scheme which is not only dangerous, but which I have shown, in the Philosophy of the Human Mind, to be absurd and incomprehensible. Indeed it is self-evident, that, as our notions of body and mind are merely relative, as we know the one only by its sensible qualities, and the other by the operations of which we are conscious, to say of mind that it is not material, is to

affirm a proposition, the truth of which is involved in the only conceptions of matter and mind that we are capable of forming."

The doubts that have been suggested with respect to the essential distinction between matter and mind derive all their plausibility from the habits of inattention we acquire in earlier infancy to our mental operations. It was plainly the intention of nature that our thoughts should be habitually directed to things external; and accordingly the bulk of mankind are not only disposed to overlook the mental phenomena, but are incapable of that degree of reflection which is necessary for their examination. Hence it is, that, when we begin to study our own internal constitution, we find the facts it presents to us so very intimately associated in our conceptions with the qualities of matter, that it is impossible for us to draw distinctly and steadily the line between them; and that when mind and matter are concerned in the same event, mind is either entirely overlooked, or is regarded only as an accessary to matter, and as dependent upon it for its existence. The tendency

which all men have to refer the sensation of color to the objects by which it is excited may serve to illustrate the manner in which the qualities of mind and body come to be blended in our apprehensions. We may add, as a further illustration of the same thing, the reference which, in the case of physical events, we naturally make to matter, of power, or force, or energy, which is an attribute of mind, and can exist in mind only. The same observation might be exemplified in numberless other instances, of which I shall at present mention only one, the confusion between the terms sensation and perception which has produced the ideal theory. In general, the bulk of mankind are so engrossed with external objects, that they overlook entirely their own mental operations, and even lose the capacity of attending to them; insomuch that the mind is compared by Locke to the eye, which sees every object around us, but cannot see itself. This tendency of our nature is to be counteracted only by habits of reflection, of which very few men are capable, and which, unless we are