or misery which his soul experiences when he is asleep; and if we take away a consciousness of our sensations, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity.

If the soul thinks during profound sleep, it must be conscious of its perceptions; but the sleeping man is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose the soul of Castor separated from his body during sleep to think apart, and let it choose for its place of thinking the body of Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul, for if it thinks what Castor is not conscious of, it is no matter what place it thinks in. We have here two bodies with one soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns; the soul still thinking in the waking man, of which the sleeping man is never conscious. Are not Castor and Pollux two persons as distinct as Castor and Hercules? and might not one of them be happy and the other miserable? By the same reason, they make the soul and man two persons, who make the soul think what the man is not conscious of: for no one will make personal identity consist in the soul's being united to the same numerical particles of matter; for then it will be impossible that any man should be the same person two days or moments together.

It will be said that the soul thinks in the soundest sleep, but the memory retains it not. That the soul should be this moment busy in thinking, and the next moment not be able to recollect one jot of those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived. Most men pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I knew a man who told me that he had never dreamed till he had a fever, which was about the 25th of his age. To think without retaining it for a moment is a useless sort of thinking: the soul is thus no better than a looking-glass, which receives a variety of images, and retains none. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man, the body is employed in think

year

ing, and that traces are left on the brain; but that in a sleeping man the soul thinks apart, and leaves no impression on the body. Not to mention the absurdity of two distinct persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer farther, that what the mind can receive, it may also retain without the body, or the soul has but little advantage in thinking. If it has no memory of its thoughts, and can make no use of its reasonings, to what purpose does it think? Characters drawn on the dust, that the first breath of wind effaces, are as useful as the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking. And it is hardly to be conceived that the infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty as the power of thinking to be so uselessly employed, at least a fourth part of its time, as to think constantly without remembering its thoughts, or being useful to itself or others.

It is true we have instances of perception while we are asleep, which for the most part are extravagant and incoherent. Now I would ask, whether the soul, when it thinks apart from the body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with it, or no :-if less rationally, then the soul owes its perfection to the body; if more rationally, it is a wonder that our dreams should be so frivolous, and that the soul should retain none of its more rational meditations.

Those who tell us that the soul always thinks, should tell us what are the ideas of the soul of a child before it receives any by sensation. The dreams of a sleeping man are, as I take it, made up of the waking man's ideas; but it is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own, not derived from sensation or reflection, that it should never retain any of them. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it received any from the body, it is not to be supposed, but that, during sleep, it recollects its native ideas; which, since the waking man never remembers, we must conclude that the soul remembers something which the man does

not, or that memory belongs only to ideas derived from the body. I would also be glad to learn from these men, how they come to know that they think when they do not perceive it. The utmost that can be said is, that the soul may always think, but not always retain it; and I say, it is as possible that the soul may not always think, which is more probable than that it should think, and the next moment forget that it had thought.

They who tell us that the soul always thinks, do not say that a man always thinks. Can the soul think, and not the man; or a man think, and not be conscious of it? To say that the man thinks always, but is not conscious of it, is as unintelligible as to say that a body is extended without parts, or that a man is always hungry but does not always feel it; whereas hunger consists in the very sensation, as thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks. If they say that a man is always conscious to himself of thinking, I ask, how they know it? Wake a man out of sleep, and ask him what he was thinking on? If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts, that can assure him that he was thinking. They must needs have a penetrating sight, who can see that I think, when I cannot perceive it myself: this some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians; it seeming easier to make one's self invisible to others, than to make another's thoughts visible to me which are not visible to himself. But it is but defining the soul to be a substance that always thinks, and the business is done. Such definition, however, may make some men suspect that they have no souls, since they find much of their lives pass away without thinking.

I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas. He that will suffer himself to be informed by experience and observation, will find few symptoms of

thinking in a new-born child, and fewer still of reasoning. Follow a child from its birth, and you shall find that as the mind by the senses comes more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more awake. It comes by degrees to distinguish strangers from the persons with whom it daily converses, which are effects of its retaining and distinguishing the ideas the senses convey to it; and by degrees the mind advances to the exercise of the other faculties of enlarging, compounding, abstracting, and reasoning.

If it be asked when a man begins to have any ideas, the true answer is, when he first has any sensation; for since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas are coeval with sensation. The mind first employs itself about the impressions made on the senses, in perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, &c. In time the mind reflects on its own operations, and stores itself with what I call ideas of reflection. Thus the impressions made on our minds by outward objects, and the reflection of the mind on its own operations, are the original of all our knowlege. In this part the understanding is merely passive; the objects of our senses obtrude their ideas on the mind whether we will or no; and the operations of our minds will not let us be without some obscure notions of them. These simple ideas the mind can no more refuse, alter, or obliterate, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate images which the objects set before it do therein produce.

CHAPTER II.

Of Simple Ideas.

Of ideas, some are simple and some complex. Though the qualities which affect our senses are in the things themselves united and blended, yet the ideas they produce enter the mind simple and unmixed : for

perceptions and knowlege, every one will find it true in himself.

To conclude; some truths are seen as soon as proposed, and others require deductions made with attention, before they can be discovered and assented to. The former, from their easy and general reception, have been mistaken for innate. But ideas and notions are no more born with us than arts and sciences, though some are more readily received than others, according as our faculties are employed. The difference in the notions of mankind is from the different use of their faculties; some take things on trust, enslaving their minds to the dominion of others; others, employing their thoughts about some few things, grow acquainted with them, and are ignorant of all other. Thus, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, is a certain truth, yet there are millions who know it not; and he that knows this proposition may be ignorant of other propositions in mathematics which are as clear as this, because, in his search of those truths, he went not so far. The same may happen concerning our notions of a Deity; for though there be no truth which may be more evidently made out than the existence of a God, yet he that shall not make inquiry into the causes of things, and pursue those thoughts with attention, may live long without the notion of such a Being; and if any person put such a notion into his head, he may yield his assent as to a probable opinion, but he hath no knowlege of the truth of it.

What censure this doubting of innate principles may deserve from men who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of truth, I cannot tell. I persuade myself that I have laid those foundations Truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have followed. With all due respect to other men's opinions, it will

surer.