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or observation to fupport it. We are, according to all appearance, juft as much fatigued with thinking as with walking; and to fay, that it is the body only that is fatigued, in this cafe, and not the mind itself, is abfolutely gratis dictum. There is just the fame reafon to conclude, that the thinking powers are exhausted, in the one cafe, as that the walking powers are exhaufted in the other. That we think at all, in perfectly found fleep, is by no means probable. On the contrary, according to appearances, the thinking powers are refreshed by reft in fleep, exactly as the muscular strength is recruited by the fame means.

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OBJECTION XIV. From Abfence of Mind.

It is faid by Mr. Baxter *, That" it is altogether inconfiftent with the materiality "of the thing that thinks in us, that we are "fometimes fo wholly occupied in the con"templation of fome abfent objects, or fome

purely ideal thing, that we are quite imperσε cipient of objects round us, and which at prefent act upon our fenfes." Among other inftances, he afterwards +, mentions the conftant preffure of our own bodies, occafioned by gravitation, whether we walk, fit, or lie.

But nothing is requifite to folve the difficulty in these cafes, but the fuppofition, that whatever be the effect of any fenfation or * Effay on the Soul, p. 428.

·† P. 430.

idea upon the brain, the impreffion may be fo strong as to overpower all other impreffions. This we know is actually the cafe with the eye. Let a man look attentively upon any very bright object, and immediately afterwards turn his eyes upon whatever other objects he pleafes, and he either will not fee them at all, or they will all appear to be of the fame colour; fo that, in this violent affection of the eye, fainter impreffions are not fenfibly perceived, though they cannot but be made upon the eye in those circumftances, as well as others. Now the brain is of the very same substance with the retina, and optic nerves; and therefore must be fubject to a fimilar affection.

This writer explains thefe cafes by fuppofing, that the mind " voluntarily employs "itfelf, while it is thus inattentive to things

prefent, in the earnest confideration of fome σε things that are abfent." But volition is not at all concerned in the cafe; for nothing can be more evident, than that this abfence of mind is altogether an involuntary thing. It is not choice that either leads to it, or prolongs it; for this would imply, that the mind had been aware of other objects having folicited its attention, and that it had peremptorily refused to give any attention to them. Whereas, at the close of a reverie of this kind, the mind is always inconscious of any foreign objects having obtruded themselves upon it at all, just as in the case of sound sleep.

VOL. I.

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OBJECTION XV. From the corruptibility of

Matter.

The greateft caufe of that averfion which we feel to the fuppofition of the foul being material, is our apprehenfion, that it will then be liable to corruption, which we imagine it cannot be if it be immaterial. But, for any thing that we know, neither of these inferences are juft, and, therefore, no advantage whatever is, in fact, gained by the modern hypothefis. All things material are not liable to corruption, if by corruption be meant diffolution, except in circumstances to which they are not naturally expofed. It is only very compound bodies that are properly liable to corruption, and only vegetable and animal fubftances ever become properly putrid and offenfive, which is the real fource of the objection.

It is poffible, however, that even a human body may be wholly exempt from corruption, though those we have at prefent are not, as is evident from the account that the apoftle Paul gives of the bodies with which we shall rife from the dead; when from earthly, they will become fpiritual; from corruptible, incorruptible; and from mortal, immortal.

Befides, how does it follow, that an immaterial fubftance cannot be liable to decay or diffolution, as well as a material one? In fact, all the reason that any person could ever

have for imagining this, must have been that an immaterial fubftance, being, in all respects, the reverse of a material one, must be incorruptible, because the former is corruptible. But till we know fomething pofitive concerning this fuppofed immaterial fubftance, and not merely its not being matter, it is impoffible to pronounce whether it may not be liable to change, and be diffolved, as well as a material substance. Neceffary immutability, is an attribute that cannot be demonstrated except of God only; and he who made all things, material or immaterial, may have fubjected them to whatever laws he pleases, and may have made the one as much fubject. to change and decay as the other, for any thing that we know to the contrary: so that all our flattering notions of the fimplicity and incorruptibility of immaterial fubftances are mere fancy and chimera, unfupported by any evidence whatever. The foul has been fuppofed to be neceffarily incorruptible, because it is indivifible, but that argument I presume was fufficiently anfwered, when it was fhewn that ideas which have parts, as most of our ideas manifeftly have, cannot exist in a foul that has no parts; fo that the fubject of thought in man cannot be that fimple and indivifible, and confequently not that indifcerptible thing that it has been imagined to be.

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SECTION XI.

The Objection from CONSCIOUSNESS more particularly confidered.

SINCE, in all metaphyfical subjects, there is a perpetual appeal made to consciousness, or internal feeling; that is, to what we certainly and intuitively know by reflecting on what paffes within our own minds, and I have hitherto contented myself with noticing the particular inftances in which I apprehended fome mistake has been made with refpect to it, as they occurred in the course of my argument; I shall here give a more general view of the fubject, in order to acquaint my reader what things they are that, I apprehend, we can be confcious of, and efpecially to caution him against confounding them with those things of which we are not properly confcious, but which we only infer from them.

When we shut our eyes on the external world, and contemplate what we find within ourselves, we first perceive the images, or the ideas of the objects by which our fenfes have been impreffed. Of these we are properly confcious. They are what we immediately obferve, and are not deductions from any prior obfervations.

In the next place, we know by intuition, or are confcious, that these ideas appear,

and re

appear,

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