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that are made on the brain, and the traces there left after fuch thinking; but that in the thinking of the foul, which is not perceived in a fleeping man, there the foul thinks apart, and making no ufe of the organs of the body, leaves no impreffions on it, and confequently no memɔry of fuch thoughts. Not to mention again the abfurdity of two diftinct perfons, which follows from this fuppofition, I anfwer farther, That whatever ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body, it is reafonable to conclude, it can retain without the help of the body too; or elfe the foul, or any feparate fpirit, will have but little advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts; if it cannot lay them up for its ufe, and be able to recal them upon occafion; if it cannot reflect upon what is paft, and make use of its former experiences, reafonings, and contemplations, to what purpose does it think? They who make the foul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they condemn for allowing it to be nothing but the fubtileft parts of matter. Characters drawn on duft, that the first breath of wind effaces, or impreffions made on a heap of atoms, or animal fpirits, are altogether as ufeful, and render the fubject as noble as the thoughts of a foul that perish in thinking; that once out of fight, are gone for ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses; and it is hardly to be conceived, that our infinitely wife Creator fhould make so admirable a faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehenfible Being, to be fo idly and 'ufelefsly employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think conftantly, without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itfelf or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we will examine it, we shall not find, I fuppofe, the motion of dull and fenfeless matter any where in the universe made fo little ufe of, and fo wholly thrown away.

$ 16. On this Hypothefis, the Soul must have Ideas not derived from Senfation or Reflection, of which there is: no Appearance.

IT is true, we have sometimes inftances of perception, whilft we are asleep, and retain the memory of thofe thoughts; but how extravagant and incoherent for the molt part they are, how little conformable to the perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need not be told. This I would willingly be fatisfied in, whether the foul when it thinks thus apart, and as it were feparate from the body, acts lefs rationally than when conjointly with it or no? If its separate thoughts be lefs rational, then these men must say, that the foul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the body; if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams fhould be, for the most part, so frivolous and irrational, and that the foul fhould retain none of its more rational foliloquies and meditations.

§ 17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can!

know it.

THOSE Who fo confidently tell us that the foul always ac-tually thinks, I would they would also tell us what those ideas are that are in the foul of a child before, or just at the union with the body, before it hath received any by fenfation? The dreams of fleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the moft part oddly put together. It is ftrange, if the foul has ideas of its own that it derived not from fenfation or reflection, (as it must have, if it thought before it received any impreffion from the body) that it should never, in its private thinking (fo private, that the man himself perceives it not) retain any of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new difcoveries. Who can find it reasonable, that the foul fhould, in its retirement, during fleep, have fo many hours thoughts,, and yet never light on any of those ideas it borrowed not from fenfation or reflection; or, at leaft, preferve the memory of none but fuch, which being occafioned from

the body, must needs be lefs natural to a spirit? It is ftrange the foul should never once in a man's whole life recal over any of its pure native thoughts, and thofe ideas it had, before it borrowed any thing from the body, never bringing into the waking man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of the cafk, and manifeftly derive their original from that union. If it always thinks, and fo had ideas before it was united, or beforeit received any from the body, it is not to be fuppofed but that during fleep it recollects its native ideas, and during that retirement from communicating with the body, whilft it thinks by itself, the ideas it is bufied about should be, fometimes at least, thofe more natural and congenial ones, which it had in itfelf underived from the body, or its own operations about them, which, fince the waking man never remembers, we must from this hypothefis conclude, either that the foul remembers fomething that the man does not, or else that memory belongs only to fuch ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about them.

18. How knows any one that the Soul always thinks? For if it be not a felf-evident Propofition, it needs Proof.

I WOULD be glad alfo to learn from these men, who fo confidently pronounce, that the human foul, or, which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it, nay, how they come to know that they themselves think, when they themselves do not perceive it? This, I am afraid, is to be fure without proofs, and to know. without perceiving; it is, I fufpect, a confused notion, taken up to ferve an hypothefis, and none of thofe clear truths that either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence to deny; for the most that can be faid of it is, that it is poffible the foul may always think, but not always retain it in memory; and, I fay, it is as poffible that the foul may not always think, and much more probable that it fhould fometimes not think, than that it fhould often think, and that a long while together, and

not be confcious to itself the next moment after that it had thought.

$ 19. That a Man should be busy in thinking, and yet not retain it the next moment, very improbable.

To fuppofe the foul to think, and the man not to perceive it, is, as has been faid, to make two perfons in one man; and if one confiders well these mens way of fpeaking, one should be led into a fufpicion that they must do fo; for they who tell us that the foul always thinks, do never, that I remember, fay that a man always thinks. Can the foul think, and not the man? or a man think, and not be conscious of it? This, perhaps, would be fufpected of jargon in others. If they say, the man thinks always, but is not always confcious of it, they may as well fay, his body is extended without having parts; for it is altogether as intelligible to say, that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing. thinks without being conscious of it, or perceiving that it does fo. They who talk thus, may with as much reafon, if it be neceffary to their hypothefis, fay, that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always. feel it; whereas hunger confifts in that very fenfation, as thinking confifts in being conscious that one thinks. If they fay, that a man is always confcious to himself of thinking, I afk, how they know it? Confciousness is the perception of what paffes in a man's own mind. Can another man perceive that I am conscious of any thing, when I perceive it not myfelf? No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. Wake a man out of a found fleep, and afk him, What he was that moment thinking on? If he himfelf be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts, that can affure him that he was thinking; may he not with more reafon affure him he was not afleep? This is fomething beyond philofophy, and it cannot be less than revelation that discovers to another thoughts in my mind, when I can find none there myself; and they muft needs have a penetrating fight, who can certainly fee that I think, when I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do

not, and yet can fee that dogs or elephants do not think, when they give all the demonftration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do fo. This fome may fufpect to be a step beyond the Rofecrucians, it seeming eafier to make one's felf invifible to others, than to make another's thoughts vifible to me, which are not visible to himfelf. But it is but defining the foul to be a fubftance that always thinks, and the bufinefs is done. If fuch definition be of any authority, I know not what it can ferve for, but to make many men fufpect that they have no fouls at all, fince they find a good part of their lives pafs away without thinking; for no definitions, that I know, no fuppofitions of any fect, are of force enough to deftroy conftant experience; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing beyond what we perceive, that makes so much ufelefs difpute

and noise in the world.

§ 20. No Ideas but from Senfation or Reflection, evi

dent, if we obferve Children.

I SEE no reason therefore to believe, that the foul thinks before the fenfes have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as thofe are increased and retained, fo it comes, by exercife, to improve its faculty of thinking, in the feveral parts of it; as well as afterwards, by compounding thofe ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its ftock, as well as facility, in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. $ 21.

HE that will fuffer himfelf to be informed by obfervation and experience, and not make his own hypothefis the rule of nature, will find few figns of a foul accuftomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any reasoning at all; and yet it is hard to imagine, that the rational foul fhould think so much, and not reafon at all. And he that will consider, that infants, newly come into the world, spend the greatest part of their time in fleep, and are feldom awake, but when either hunger calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all fenfations), or fome other violent impreffion upon the body, forces the mind to per

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