SECT. XXIII. And no way repugnant to reason.

NEITHER can we find any argument drawn from nature, which overthrows this ancient and extensive tradition:¹⁷⁸¹⁷⁸   This matter might be handled more exactly, and upon better principles of philosophy, if our room would allow it. I. We ought to define what we mean by the death of the soul, which would happen, if either the substance of the soul were reduced to nothing, or if there were so great a change made in it, that it were deprived of the use of all its faculties; thus, material things are said to be destroyed, if either their substance ceases to be, or if their form be so altered, that they are no longer of the same species; as when plants are burnt or putrefied; the like to which befals brute creatures. II. It cannot be proved that the substance of the soul perishes: for bodies are net entirely destroyed, but only divided, and their parts separated front each other. Neither can any man prove, that the soul ceases to think, which is the life of the soul after the death of the man; for it does not follow, that, when the body is destroyed, the mind is destroyed too, it having never yet been proved that it is a material substance. III. Nor has the contrary yet been made appear, by certain philosophic arguments, drawn from the nature of the soul; because we are ignorant of it. It is true, indeed, that the soul is not, by its own nature, reduced to nothing; neither is the body; this must be done by the particular act of their Creator. But it may possibly be without any thought or memory; which state, as I before said, may be called the death of it. But, IV. If the soul, after the dissolution of the body, should remain for ever in that state, and never return to its thought or memory again, then there can be no account given of Divine Providence, which has been proved to be by the foregoing arguments. God’s goodness and justice, the love of virtue, and hatred to vice, which every one acknowledges in him, would be only empty names; if he should confine his benefits to the short and fading good things of this life, and make no distinction betwixt virtue and vice; both good and bad men equally perishing for ever, without seeing in this life any rewards or punishments dispensed to those who have done well or ill: and hereby God would cease to be God, that is, the most perfect being; which, if we take away, we cannot give any account of almost any other thing, as Grotius has sufficiently shewn, by those arguments whereby he has demonstrated, that all things were created by God. Since, therefore, there is a God, who loves virtue and abhors vice, the souls of men must be immortal, and reserved for rewards or punishments in another life. But this requires further enlargement. Le Clerc.—The proof of the soul’s immortality, drawn from the consideration of the nature of it, may be seen in its full force in dr. Clarke’s letter to mr. Dodwell, and the defences of it. 75for all those things, which seem to us to be destroyed, are either destroyed by the opposition of something more powerful than themselves, as cold is destroyed by the greater force of heat; or by taking away the subject upon which they depend, as the magnitude of a glass, by breaking it; or by the defect of the efficient cause, as light by the absence of the sun. But none of these can be applied to the mind. Not the first, because nothing can be conceived contrary to the mind; nay, such is the peculiar nature of it, that it is capable equally, and at the same time, of contrary 76things in its own, that is, in an intellectual, manner. Not the second, because there is no subject upon which the nature of the soul depends; for if there were any, it would be a human body;¹⁷⁹¹⁷⁹   That there is none, Aristotle proves very well from old men, book i. ch. 4. concerning the soul. Also, book iii. ch. 4. he commends Anaxagoras for saying, that mind was simple and unmixed, that it might distinguish other things. and that it is not so, appears from hence, that when the strength of the body fails by action, the mind only does not contract any weariness by acting. Also, the powers of the body suffer, by the too great power of the things which are the objects of them, as sight by the light of the sun.¹⁸⁰¹⁸⁰   Aristotle, book iii. of the soul; “that there is not the like weakness in the intellectual part that there is in the sensitive, is evident from the organs of sense, and from sensation itself; for there can be no sensation, where the object of such sensation is too strong; that is, where the sound is too loud, there is no sound; and where the smell is too strong, or the colours too bright, they cannot be smelt, nor seen. But the mind, when it considers things most excellent to the understanding, it is not hindered by them from thinking, any more than it is by meaner things, but rather excited by them: because the sensitive part cannot be separated from the body, but the mind may.” Add to this, the famous place of Plotinus, quoted by Eusebius, in his Preparat. book xv. chap. 22. Add also, that the mind can overcome those passions which arise from the body, by its own power; and can choose the greatest pains, and even the death of it. But the mind is rendered the more perfect, by bow much the more excellent the things are about which it is conversant; as about figures abstracted from matter, and about universal propositions.¹⁸¹¹⁸¹   And those are the most excellent actions of the mind which call it off most from the body. The powers of the body are exercised about those things which are limited by time and place, but the mind, about that which is infinite and eternal. Therefore, since the mind, in its operations, does not depend upon the body, so neither does its existence depend upon it; for we cannot judge of the nature of those things which we do not see, but from their operations. Neither has the third method of 77being destroyed any place here: for there is no efficient cause from which the mind continually flows: not the parents, because the children live after they are dead. If we allow any cause at all, from whence the mind flows, it can be no other than the first and universal cause, which, as to its power, can never fail; and as to its will, that that should fail, that is, that God should will the soul to be destroyed, this can never be proved by any arguments.