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how should the spiritual being, immured as she is in her dark cell, and unused to such a deception as this, how should we know it was a deception any more than an Indian, who had never seen a picture, could find at the first view, that the canvass was really flat, though it appeared to exhibit a landscape of several miles in extent? It is therefore conceivable that the mind may be strongly and forcibly affected by a material system, without being itself material. And that the mind is not material, appears farther, in that she abstracts herself from the body, when she would apply most closely to thought; that the soul is capable of purely abstract ideas, as of rectitude, order, virtue, vice, and the like; to which matter furnishes no archetype, nor has any connexion with them; that it is affected by what is confessedly not matter, as the sense of words heard, or read in books, which if it were material it could not be : which shows our minds to be quite different beings from the body, and naturally independent on it; that we can conceive of matter in a way, which we cannot of spirit, and contrariwise; matter being still to be, without any contradiction, conceived of as divisible and inactive; whereas it is impossible to apply those ideas to spirit, without a direct absurdity, which shows, that the mind is the same, conscious, indivisible, identical being, though the body is subject to continual change, addition, and diminution; that the mind continues to improve in the most noble and valuable accomplishments, when the body is going fast to decay; that, even the moment before the dissolution of the body, the vigour of the mind seems often wholly unimpaired; that the interests of the mind and body are always different, and often opposite, as in the case of being obliged to give up life for truth. These considerations, attended to duly, show, that we have no reason to question the possibility of the living principle's subsisting after the dissolution of the material vehicle.

As to the difficulty arising from the consideration of the close connexion between the body and soul, and the impressions made by the one upon the other, which has led some to question whether they are in reality at all distinct beings, it is to be remembered, that this connexion, which is absolutely necessary in the present state, is wholly owing to the divine disposal, and not to any likeness.

much less sameness, of the thinking, intelligent agent with the gross corporeal vehicle. If it had so pleased the Author of our being, he could have fixed such a natural con. nexion between our minds and the moon, or planets, that their various revolutions and aspects might have affected us in the same manner, as now the health or disorder of our bodies does. But this would not have the moon and planets a part of us. No more do the mutual impressions, made reciprocally by the mind and body, prove them to be the same, or that the human nature is all body, especially considering that as already observed, in many cases we evidently perceive an independency and difference between them.

It cannot be pretended that there is any absurdity in conceiving of the animating principle as existing even before conception in the womb, nor of a new union commencing at a certain period, by a fixed law of nature, between it and a corporeal vehicle, which union may be supposed to continue, according to certain established laws of nature for a long course of years; and may be broke, or dissolved, in the same regular manner; so that the system of matter, to which the animating principle was united, may be no more to it than any other system of matter.

It is remarkable, that all living creatures, especially our species, on their first appearance in life, seem at a loss, as if the mind was not, in the infant state, quite engaged and united to its new vehicle, and, therefore could not command and wield it properly. Sleep, infirm old age, severe sickness, and fainting, seem according to certain established laws of nature, partly to loosen or relax the union between the living principle, the mind, and the material vehicle; and, as it were, to set them at a greater distance from one another, or make them more indifferent to one another, as if (so to speak) almost beyond the sphere of one another's attraction. Death is nothing more than the total dissolution of this tie, occasioned in a natural way, by some alteration in the material frame, not in the mind; whereby that which formed the nexus, or union, whatever that may be, is removed or disengaged. It is probable, that the axiety and distress, under which the mind commonly feels itself at death, is owing rather to the manner and process of the dissolution, than to the dissolution

itself. For we observe, that very aged persons, and infants, often die without a struggle. The union between soul and body, being already weak, is easily dissolved. And if sleep be, as it seems, a partial dissolution of this union, or a setting the mind and body at a greater distance from one another, the reason why it gives no disturbance is, that it comes on in such a manner as not forcibly to tear in pieces, but gently to relax the ligatures, whatever they are, between the material and spiritual natures. That there is an analogy between sleep and death is evident from observing, that sleep sometimes goes on to death, as in lethargic cases, and in the effects of strong opiates. And it is remarkable, that the life of a person, who has taken too large a dose of opium, cannot be saved but by forcibly waking him; as if the mutual action of the mind and body upon one another was the medium of the union; and that, if their mutual action upon one another comes to be lessened to a certain degree, they become indifferent to one another, and the union between them ceases of course, as two companions walking together in the dark may come to lose one another, by dropping their conversation, and keeping a profound silence.

It is probable, that the condition in which the mind, just disengaged from the body, feels itself, is very much like to that of dreaming; all confusion, uncertainty, and incoherence of ideas; and that, in some measure, like the infant mind newly entered upon a state wholly unknown, it finds itself greatly at a loss, and exert itself with much difficulty and disadvantage; till a little time and habit qualifies it for a new and untried scene of action.*

If the true account of the human nature be, that the spiritual, active, thinking principle is united to a subtile etherial vehicle, whose residence is in the brain, and the death is the departure of the soul and spirit from the body; which

* The author is not ashamed to confess, that he now thinks his former opin. ion concerning the state of the dead, as represented in these paragraphs, erroneous; though he chooses not to alter the text on that account; thinking it hardly fair to lessen the value of former editions, by adding to succeeding ones what is better laid before readers in separate publications. The author is now inclineable to think Doctor Law's opinion, in his Theory of Religion, more rational, as well as more scriptural, than the generally received notion of the soul's being in a full state of consciousness and activity between death and resurrection. It is a point of mere speculation, no way materially affecting either faith or manners.

was the notion of the Platonic Philosophers and Jewish rabbii, and seems to be countenanced by the apostle Paul; if this be the true account of the human make, there is no difficulty in conceiving the possibility of the mind's thinking and acting in a state of total separation from the gross terrestrial body, notwithstanding the seeming difficulty of a suspension of thought in profound sleep, or in a fainting fit. For the embodied and separate states are so very different, there is no reasoning from one to the other on every point. It may be impossible for the mind, while imprisoned in the body, in a great disorder of the animal frame, to join ideas together, for want of its traces in the brain, and other implements of reasoning, to which it has all along been accustomed, and which it cannot do without; and yet may be possible for the same mind, when freed from its dark prison, to go to work in a quite different manner, to receive impressions immediately from the objects themselves, which it received before by the intervention of the senses, and to contrive for itself memorial traces, and the other necessary apparatus for improvement, in a much more perfect manner. It may then be able to penetrate into the internal substance, and examine the minute arrangement of the smallest corpuscles of all kinds of material systems. By applying its ductile and delicate vehicle, which may be considered as all sensation, all eye, all ears, and touch, it may accurately take off, not only the real form, but the internal nature and state of things, with all their properties, and present them to the immediate intuition of the perceptive principle, just as they are in themselves; whereas at present the mind apprehends things only as the dull and imperfect bodily senses exhibit them to it. It may be able to contract itself to the examination of the internal structure of the body of the minutest animalcule; and it may, as it goes on to improve and enlarge its powers, come to such a perfection, as to diffuse its actual presence and intelligence over a kingdom, or round the whole globe, so as to perceive all that passes in every spot on the face of it. It may enter into, and examine the sublime ideas which are treasured up in the mind of an angel, and as now, by perusing a book, it acquires new views, and by slow degrees perfect those it had before acquired; so it may hereafter attain such a capacity

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of comprehension, as to be able to take off at one intuition a whole new science. Thus new powers and faculties, for which we have at present no names, may be forever springing up in the mind, which will ever find new employment in examining and inquiring into truth. For the object of the mind is infinite.

That our species should have another state to enter upon, wholly different from the present, is so far from being unreasonable to expect, that it is analogous to the whole scheme of Nature. For there is no species, as far we know, that do not live in different successive states. But to instance only the insect tribe, many of that species, besides their animalcule state, before they be propagated from the male, in which they differ in nothing from the whole animal creation, appear first as eggs, and afterwards as living reptiles, capable of motion and feeding; then they enter upon their nymph or aurelia state, and continue for several months as it were coffined up in their slough and totally insensible. At last they burst their prison, expand their wings, and fly away in the shape of butterflies, dragonflies, or other winged insects, according to their several species. This succession of states, of which the last is the most perfect, has been considered as emblematical of our mortal life, our intermediate state, and resurrection to immortality.

But the most irrefragable proofs for the future immortality of the human species, separate from those which revelation yields, are taken from the consideration of the perfections of the Maker and Governor of the world, who designs all his works according to infinite wisdom and goodness, and according to the true state of things. No one can suppose that a God of truth would have allowed that a whole order of rational creatures should, by any means whatever, be misled into an universal persuasion of a state for which they never were intended. For it is evident, that if we are not formed for a future immortal state, we can have no more concern with any thing beyond death, than with the world in the moon, and consequently, our whole business being with the present life, it is not to be supposed, that our infinitely wise Creator would have suffered our attention to have been taken off from it, by our being led into the notion of any other; much less

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