very expression of the plurality and divisibility of feeling,—is, that it assumes what, far from admitting, we cannot even understand; and that, with every effort of attention, which we can give to our mental analysis, we are as incapable of forming any conception of what is meant by the quarter of a doubt, or the half of a belief, as of forming to ourselves an image of a circle without a central point, or of a square without a single angle. With respect to this possible geometry of sensations, as divisible into parts, I cannot but think that the too great caution of Mr. Locke, by giving the sanction of his eminent name to the possibility, at least of the superaddition of thought as a mere quality, to a system of particles,-which as a number of particles have no thought, and yet have as a whole, what they have not as parts of that whole,--has tended, in a great degree, to shelter the manifest inconsistency of the doctrine of the materialist. He was unwilling to limit the divine power; and from the obscurity of our notion of the connexion of the feelings of the mind in any manner, with the changes induced in the bodily frame, he conceived that the annexation of thought to the system of particles itself would be but a siight addition to difficulties, that must at any rate be admitted. He forgot, however, that a system of particles is but a name for the separate particles which alone have any real existence in nature,—that the affirmation of what is contradictory, like plurality and unity, simplicity and complexity, is very different from the mere admission of ignorance; and that, though we may not know any reason, for which the Deity has been pleased, at least during our mortal state, to render sensations of our mind dependent on affections of our nervous system, there is no more absurdity in the affirmation of such a dependence, than in the assertion of any other physical connexion of events,-of material phenomena with material phenomena, or of mental phenomena with other phenomena of mind. If the presence of the moon, at the immense distance of its orbit, can affect the tendencies of the particles of water in our ocean, it may be supposed with equal readiness, to produce a change in the state of any other existing substance, whether divisible into parts, that is to say material or indivisible, that is to say, mind. But when thought is affirmed to be a quality of a system of particles, or to be one result of many co-existing states of particles, which separately are not thought, -something more is affirmed, than that, of which we are merely ignorant of the reason. A who'e is said to be different from all the separate and independent parts of a whole: this is one absurdity; and that which is felt by us, as in its very nature, simple and indivisible, is affirmed to be only a form of that which is, by its very nature, infinitely divisible. It is no daring limitation of the divine power to suppose, that even the Omnipotent himself cannot confound the mathematical properties of squares and hexagons: and it would be no act of irreverence to his power, though it were capable of doing every thing which is not contradictory, to suppose, that he cannot give to a system of organs a quality wholly distinct from the qualities of all the separate parts; since the organ itself is only a name which we give to those parts, that are all which truly exist as the organ, and have all an existence, and qualities that are at every moment independent of the existence and qualities of every other atom, near or remote. Our sensations we know directly,-matter we know indirectly, if we can be said to know its nature at all-as the cause of our sensations. It is that which, in certain circumstances, affects us in a certain manner. When we have said this, we have said all that can be considered as truly known by us with respect to it; and in saying this, it is to our own feelings that the reference is made. Of the two systems, therefore,--the system which rejects all matter, and the system which rejects all mind-there can be no question which is the more philosophic. The materialist must take for granted every feeling, for which the follower of Berkeley contends; he must admit, that it is impossible for us to know the absolute nature of matter; and that all which we can know of it is relative to ourselves, as sentient beings, capable of being affected by external objects;-that our sensations are known to us directly, -the causes of our sensations only indirectly; and his system, therefore, even though we omit every other objection, may be reduced to this single proposition, that our feelings which we know, are the same in nature with that, of which the absolute nature, as it exists independently of our feelings, is and must always be completely unknown to us. From all the remarks which have now been made, I cannot but think that it is a very logical deduction, that our feelings are states of something which is one and simple, and not of a plurality of substances, near or remote ;that the principle of thought, therefore, whatever it may be, is not divisible into parts; and that hence, though it may be annihilated, as every thing which exists may be annihilated, by the will of Him who can destroy as he could create, it does not admit of that decay of which the body admits,—a decay that is relative to the frame only, not to the elements that compose it. When the body seems to us to perish, we know that it does not truly perish -that every thing which existed in the decaying frame, continues to exist entire, as it existed before; and that the only change which takes place, is a change of apposition or proximity. From the first moinent at which the earth arose, there is not the slightest reason to think that a single atom has perished. All that was is: and if nothing has perished in the material universe ;-if, even in that bodily dissolution, which alone gave occasion to the belief of our mortality as sentient beings, there is not the loss of the most inconsiderable particle of the dissolving frame, the argument of analogy, far from leading us to suppose the destruction of that spiritual being which animated the frame, would lead us to conclude that it, too, exists, as it before existed; and that it has only changed its relation to the particles of our material organs, as these particles still subsisting, have changed the relation which they mutually bore. As the dust has only returned to the earth from which it came, it is surely a reasonable inference from analogy to suppose, that the spirit may have returned to the God who gave it. Non secus ac quondam, tenebris et carcere rupto Seque auras intra liquidas, et nubila condit.* The belief of the immateriality of the sentient and thinking principle, thus destroys the only analogy, on which the supposition of the limitation of its existence to the period of our mortal life could be founded. It renders it necessary for those who would contend that we are spiritually mortal, to produce some positive evidence of a departure, in the single case of the mind, from the whole analogies of the economy of nature; and it renders doubly strong all the moral arguments which can be urged for its own independent immortality. * Heinsii, De Contemptu Mortis, Lib. I. LECTURE XCVII. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. GENTLEMEN, the inquiry, to which I directed your attention in my last Lecture, was that which relates to our prospect of immortality. The appearances, which death exhibits, seem, when we first consider them, to mark so strongly the termination of every feeling which connected us with the once living object, that the continuance of these feelings, when every external trace of them is lost, may well be supposed to be viewed with disbelief by some, and with doubt by many. During their life, our direct communication with those who lived around us, was carried on by the intervention of bodily organs,-in thinking of their very feelings, we have been accustomed to think of this bodily intervention, in what they looked, or said, or did and from the mere influence of the laws of association, therefore, it is not wonderful, that, when they can no longer look, or speak, or act, the kindness which before could not exist without these corporeal expressions of it, should be regarded as no longer existing,-at least should be so regarded by those, who are not in the habit of any very nice analyses of complicated processes, or complex phenomena. Whatever other effects death may have, it is at least evident, that, when it has taken place, the bodily organs moulder away, by the influence of a decomposition more or less rapid. What was once to our eyes a human being, is a human being no more; and, when the organization is as if it had never been, every feeling and thought,—if states of mere organs-must be also as if they had never been. The most interesting of all questions, therefore, with respect to our hopes of immortality, is whether thought be a state of the mere organs, which decay thus evidently before our very eyes,-or a state of something, which our senses, that are confined to the mere organs, cannot reach, of something, which, as it is beyond the reach of our senses, many therefore subsist as well, when every thing which comes under our senses exists in any one state, as in any other state. With the examination of this point, my last Lecture was almost wholly occupied; and the arguments, which I then offered, seemed to me to show decisively, that our sensations, thoughts, desires, are not particles of matter, existing in any number, or any form of mere juxtaposition, that the sentient and thinking principle, in short, is essentially one,-not extended and divisible,—but incapable by its very nature of any subdivision into integral parts, and known to us only as the subject of our consciousness, in all the variety of successive feelings, which we comprehended under that single name. When we have learned clearly to distinguish the organization from the principle of thought, the mere change of place of the particles of the organic frame, which is all that constitutes death relatively to the body, no longer seems to imply the dissolution of the principle of thought itself,-which is essentially distinct from the organic frame, and, by its very nature, incapable of that species of change, which the body exhibits; since it is very evident, that what is not composed of parts, cannot by any accident be separated into parts. VOL. II. 60 To the mind which considers it in this view then, death presents an aspect altogether different. Instead of the presumption, which the decaying body seemed to afford, of the cessation of every function of life, the very decay of the body affords analogies, that seem to indicate the continued existence of the thinking principle; since that which we term decay, is itself only another name of continued existence,-of existence, as truly continued in every thing which existed before, as if the change of mere position, which alone we term decay, had not taken place. The body, though it may seem to denote a single substance, is but a single word invented by us to express many co-existing substances: every atom of it exists after death, as it existed be fore death; and it would surely be a very strange error in logic, to infer, from the continuance of every thing that existed in the body, the destruction of that which, by its own nature, seemed as little mortal as any of the atoms which have not ceased to exist, and to infer this annihilation of mind, not merely without any direct proof of the annihilation, but without a single proof of destruction of any thing else, since the universe was formed. Death is a process in which every thing corporeal continues to exist; therefore, all that is mental ceases to exist. It would not be easy to discover a link of any sort, that might be supposed to connect the two propositions of so very strange an enthymeme. The possibility of such annihilation of the mind, no one, who admits the corresponding power of creation, will deny, if the Deity have given any intimation, tacit or expressed, that may lead us to believe his intention of destroying the spirit, while he saves every element of the body. But the question is not, whether it be possible for Hiin, who created the mind, to annihilate it; it is whether we have reason to believe such annihilation truly to take place? and of this some better proof must be offered, than the continuance, even amid apparent dissolution, of all that truly constituted the body,-every atom of which it was, without all question, equally possible for Divine power to destroy. We surely have not proved, that the whole frame of suns and planets will perish to-morrow, nor even given the slightest reason to suspect the probability of this event, because we may have shown beyond all dispute, that the Deity may, if such be his will, reduce to-morrow, or at this very moment, the whole universe to nothing. The very decay of the body, then, as I have said, bears testimony not to the destruction, but to the continuance of the undying spirit, if the principle of thought be truly different from the material frame. The mind is a substance, distinct from the bodily organ, simple, and incapable of addition or subtraction-Nothing which we are capable of observing in the universe, has ceased to exist since the universe began ;-these two propositions as far as analogy can have weight,—and since the mind of any one is incapable of being directly known to us as an object, it is the analogy of the bodily appearances alone, that can have any weight,-these two propositions, instead of leading by inference to the proposition, The mind, which existed as a substance before death, ceases wholly to exist after death, lead rather, as far as the mere analogy can have influence, to the opposite proposition. The mind does not perish in the dissolution of the body. In judging according to the mere light of nature, it is on the immaterialism of the thinking principle, that I consider the belief of its immortality to be inost reasonably founded; since the distinct existence of a spiritual substance, if that be admitted, renders it incumbent on the assertor of the mortality of the spirit to assign some reason, which may have led the only Being, who has the power of annihilation, to exert his power in annihilating the mind which he is said in that case to have created, only for a few years of life. If, therefore, but for some direct divine volition, the spiritual substance we have every reason to suppose, would continue to subsist as every thing else continues to subsist,-the only remaining question, in such a case, is whether, from our knowledge of the character of the Deity, as displayed in his works,-especially in the mind itself, we have reason to infer, with respect to the mind, this peculiar will to annihilate it, without which, we have no reason to suppose it to be the only existing thing, that is every moment perishing in some individual of our kind. The likelihood of such a purpose in the divinity, may be inferred, if it can be at all inferred, in two ways,-from the nature of the created mind itself, as exhibiting qualities which seem to mark it as peculiarly formed for limited existence, and from our knowledge of the Creator, as displaying to us in his works, indications of such a character, as of itself might lead us to infer such a peculiar intention. That, in the nature of the simple indivisible mind itself, there is nothing which marks it, as essentially more perishable, than the corpuscles to which we give the name of masses, when many of them are in close juxtaposition, but which are themselves the same, whether near or remote,-than the unperishing atoms of the leaf, that continues still entire in every element, while it seems to wither before us, or of the vapour, in which all that truly existed exists as before, while it is only to our eyes that it seems to vanish into nothing, I need not use any arguments to show. Mind, indeed, like matter, is capable of existing in various states, but a change of state is not destruction in one more than in the other. It is as entire in all its seeming changes, as matter in all its seeming changes. There is no positive argument, then, that can be drawn from the nature of the thinking principle, to justify the assertion, that while matter does not perish even in a single atom, it and it only, ceases to exist; and it would be enough, that no positive argument could be drawn from it, in support of an opinion that is inconsistent with the general analogy of nature, and unsupported by any other proof of any kind, though no negative arguments could be drawn from the same source. Every argument, however, which can be derived from it is of this negative sort, indicating in mind, a nature, which of itself, if there be any difference of degree, might seem not more, but less perishable, than those material atoms which are acknowledged to continue as they were, entire in all the seeming vicissitudes of the universe. I am aware, indeed, that, in judging from the mind itself, a considerable stress has often been laid on the existence of feelings, which admit of a very easy solution, without the necessity of ascribing them to any instinctive foreknowledge of a state of immortal being. Of this sort, particularly, seems to me an argument which, both in ancient and modern times, has been brought forward, as one of the most powerful arguments for our continued existence, after life has seemed to close upon us for ever. I allude to the universal desire of this immortal existence. But, surely, if life itself be pleasing, and even though there were no existence beyond the grave, life might still, by the benevolence of Him, who conferred it, have been rendered a source of pleasure, it is not wonderful that we should desire futurity, since futurity is only protracted life. It would, indeed, have been worthy of our astonishment, if man, loving his present life, and knowing that it was to |