The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

head or brain) by some sympathy or attraction between this material vehicle and it, till the habitation is spoiled, and this mutual tendency interrupted (and perhaps turned into an aversion, that makes it fly off) by some hurt or disease, or by the decays and ruins of old age, or the like, happening to the body; and that in the interim, by means of this vehicle motions and impressions are communicated to and fro. But of this perhaps something more by and by.

VIII. The soul of man subsists after the dissolution of his body or, is immortal. For,

If it is immaterial, it is indiscerptible, and therefore incapable of being dissolved or demolished, as bodies are.584 Such a being can only perish by annihilation: that is, it will continue to subsist and live if some other being, able to do this, does not by a particular act annihilate it. And, if there is any reason to believe that at the death of every man there is always such a particular annihilation, let him that knows it produce it. Certainly to reduce any substance into nothing requires just the same power as to convert nothing into something: and, I fancy, they who deny the immortality of the soul will be cautious how they admit any such power.

If the soul could be material⁠—that is, if there could be any matter that might be the subject of those faculties of thinking, willing, etc.⁠—yet still, since we cannot but be sensible that all these are faculties of the selfsame thing, and that all the several acts of the mind are acts of the same thing, each of them individual and truly one; I say, since it is so, this matter must be so perfectly united in itself, so absolutely one, as no matter knowable by us can be. And then the least that can be allowed is that it should be truly solid, and not actually divisible: that is, such as no natural cause could destroy.

To introduce matter with a faculty of thinking, or a “thinking matter,” is to introduce matter with a new and opposite property, and that is to introduce a new species of matter585 which will differ as essentially from the other, common, unthinking kind, as any species whatsoever does from its opposite in scala prædicamentali; even as body does from spirit. For thinking and unthinking differ as corporeal and incorporeal. And if so, this “thinking matter” must always continue to think, till either it is annihilated, or there is a transmutation of one species into another: and to take refuge in either of these expectations is at least to expect omnipotence should interpose to help out a bad cause.

If anyone should say that God might, by virtue of his omnipotence, superadd to certain parcels of matter a fourth dimension, I should not perhaps dispute the Divine power, but I might say that such matter, existing under four dimensions, would essentially differ from that which cannot exist under four, or which can exist but only under three, and that this four-dimensioned matter must always remain such, because no substance can be changed into or become another, essentially different, nor do we know of any that by the course of nature ceases totally to be, or is reduced to nothing.

The next argument shall proceed by way of objection and answer, because a removal of the principal objection against anything is a good argument for it. Objection: It seems as if thinking was not essential to the soul, but rather a capacity of thinking under certain circumstances. For it does not think when it lies concealed in the primitive rudiment of the man, in the womb, perhaps in the beginnings of infancy, in sleep, in a swoon; and the reason of this seems to lie in the circumstances of the body, which either is not sufficiently attended and prepared, or for a while employs the spirits wholly in the digestion of its aliment and other offices in the animal economy, or by some external attack, or the working of some enemy got into it has its parts disordered and the passages so possessed that the blood and other fluids can scarce break through, or after some such manner is preternaturally affected. And therefore, the question to be resolved is not whether the soul is material or immaterial, and much less whether it will be annihilated at death, but whether that soul (be it what it will), which ceases to think when the body is not fitly disposed, can think at all when the body is quite dissolved and leaves the soul no opportunity of actuating it any more or operating by it.586 Answer: If this objection cannot be fully answered, till we know more of the nature of beings, and of that vinculum by which the soul and body are connected, than we do at present, it must not therefore be looked upon as certainly unanswerable in itself; and much less, if only it cannot be answered by me. It may perhaps be possible to turn it even into an argument for the immortality of the soul.

The soul, it cannot be denied, is a limited being, or a being which acts under limitations. These limitations at different times are different; its activity and faculties being more obstructed or clogged at one time than another, and most of all in sleep, or a deliquium. As these obstructions are removed, it acts more clearly and freely, and therefore if the state of the soul in the body (its confinement there) may be considered as one general and great limitation, why, when this limitation shall be taken off (this great obstruction removed), may it587 not be allowed to act with still greater freedom and clearness: the greatest it is capable of? While it remains in the brain, it can, as it were, look out at a few apertures: that is,