"Upon this fudden death, the one visible "thing, the one man is greatly charged. "Whence could I infer that the fame be "confifts of two parts, and that the inward "part continues to live and think, and flies "away from the body, when the outward part ceases to live and move. It looks as if "the whole man was gone, and

that all his 66 powers ceafe at the fame time. His mo"tion and thought die together as far as I can "difcern.

"The powers of thought, Speech, and mo"tion equally depend upon the body, and run the fame fate in cafe of mens' declining "in old age. When a man dies through "old age I perceive his powers of speech, "motion, and thought, decay and die to

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gether, and by the fame degrees. The "moment he ceafes to move, and breathe, he 66 appears to cease to think too.

"When I am left to mere reafon, it seems "to me that my power of thought as much "depends upon my body, as my power of fight or hearing. I could not think in in"fancy. My powers of thought, of sight, " and of feeling, are equally liable to be ob"ftructed by the body. A blow on the head "has deprived a man of thought, who could yet fee and feel and move; so that na

turally the power of thinking feems as "much to belong to the body as any power "of man whatsoever. Naturally there appears no more reason to suppose that a

man

man can think out of the body, than he "can hear founds, or feel cold, out of the "body."

Notwithstanding Mr. Hallet was fatisfied that there was no good argument from the light of nature, in favour either of the immateriality or immortality of the foul, he ftill retained the belief of it on the authority, as he imagined, of revelation. But it will be feen, in a fubfequent section, that the fcriptures afford no evidence whatever of a thing so contrary to the principles of reafon; but that the facred writers go upon quite different principles, always taking for granted the very thing I am here contending for; and that the notion of the foul being a fubftance distinct from the body, was originally a part of the fyftem of heathenifm, and was from thence introduced into chriftianity, which has derived the greatest part of its corruptions from this fource.

It is ftill more unaccountable in Mr. Locke, to suppose, as he did, and as he largely contends, that, for any thing that we know to the contrary, the faculty of thinking may be a property of the body, and yet to think it more probable that this faculty inhered in a different fubftance, viz. an immaterial foul. A philofopher ought to have been apprized, that we are to fuppofe no more causes than are neceffary to produce the effects; and therefore that we ought to conclude, that the whole man is material, unless it should appear that

he has some powers or properties that are abfolutely incompatible with matter.

Since then Mr. Locke did not apprehend that there was any real inconfiftency between the known properties of body, and those that have generally been referred to mind, he ought, as became a philofopher, to have concluded that the whole fubftance of man, that which fupports all his powers and properties, was one uniform substance, and by no means that he confifted of two fubftances, and those fo very different from one another as body and Spirit are ufually reprefented to be; fo much fo, that they have been generally thought incapable of having one common property. Accordingly, the best writers upon this fubject always confider the union of these two very different fubftances as a most stupendous and wonderful thing. "Le tout pouillant," fays the author of La vraye Philofophie, "pou"voit feul etablir un accord fi intime entre deux fubftances fi difcordantes par leur nature.”

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Additional Confiderations in Favour of the Materiality of the Human Soul.

N the preceding fection, I have reprefented

IN

how unphilofophical it is to conclude that all the powers of man do not belong to the fame fubftance, when they are observed to have a conftant and neceffary dependance upon one another, and when there is not, as far as we know, the leaft inconfiftency or incompatibility between them. If there be any foundation for the established rules of philofophizing, the argument ought to be conclufive with us, and every thing that can be added to it is really fuperfluous. However, for the greater fatisfaction of some of my readers, I fhall, in this fection, fubjoin fome additional arguments, or confiderations, or rather, in fome cafes, diftinct illuftrations of the preceding argument:

1. That the faculty of thinking neceffarily depends, for its exercife, at least, upon a stock of ideas, about which it is always converfant, will hardly be queftioned by any perfon. But there is not a fingle idea of which the mind is poffeffed, but what may be proved to have come to it from the bodily fenfes, or to have been confequent upon the perceptions of fenfe. Could we, for inftance, have had any idea D

of

C

of colour, as red, blue, &c. without the eyes, and optic nerves; of found, without the ears, and auditory nerves; of smell, without the noftrils, and the olfactory nerves, &c. &c? It is even impoffible to conceive how the mind could have become poffeffed of any of its prefent ftock of ideas, without juft fuch a body as we have; and confequently, judging from prefent appearances (and we have no other means of forming any judgment at all) without a body, of fome kind or other, we could have had no ideas at all, any more than a man without eyes could have any particular ideas belonging to colours. The notion, therefore, of the poffibility of thinking in man, without an organized body, is not only deftitute of all evidence from actual appearances, but is directly contrary to them; and yet these appearances ought alone to guide the judgement of philofophers.

Dr. Clark feems have to imagined that he had fully answered the argument for the materiality of the human foul, from its having received all its ideas from the bodily fenfes, by asking whether there might not poffibly have been other inlets to ideas befides our prefent fenfes. "If thefe," fays he, Demonftration, &c. p. 89, "be arbitrary, then the "want of thefe does by no means infer a "total want of perception, but the fame foul ་་ may, in another state, have different ways " of perception."

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