considered it as their last resource in every extremity, and for the
most part still regard and cherish the belief of it, as an asylum in
which their best interests are ultimately secured or deposited,
beyond the reach of all temporary disaster or misfortune. Where,
therefore, is the probability of exterminating so popular and
prevailing a notion, by a concatenation of ideas, which, perhaps,
not one out of a million in any country under Heaven is able to
trace or comprehend?

     (2) The natural perceptions of pleasure of pain cannot be said
to act on the mind as one part of matter does on another. The
substance of the soul we do not know, but are {54} certain her ideas
must be immaterial. And these cannot possibly act either by contact
of impulse. When one body impels another, the body moved is affected
only by the impulse. But the mind, whenever roused by any pleasing
or painful sensation, in most cases looks round her, and deliberates
whether a change of state is proper, or the present more eligible;
and moves or rests accordingly. Her perceptions, therefore,
contribute no further to action, than by exciting her active powers.
On the contrary, matter is blindly and obstinately in that state in
which it is, whether of motion or rest, till changed by some other
adequate cause. Suppose we rest the state of any body, some external
force is requisite to put it in motion; and, in proportion as this
force is greater or small, the motion must be swift or slow. Did not
this body continue in its former state, no external force would be
requisite to change it; nor, when changed, would different degrees
of force be necessary to move it in different degrees of velocity.
When motion is impressed on any body, to bring it to rest, an
extra force must always be applied, in proportion to the intended
effect. This resistance is observeable in bodies both when moved in
particular directions, and to bear an exact proportion to the vis
impressa, and to the quantity of matter moved. Were it possible to
extract from matter the qualities of solidity and extension, {55}
the matter whence such qualities were extracted would no longer
resist; and consequently resistance is the necessary result of them,
which, therefore, in all directions must be the same. The degree of
resistance in any body being proportionate to the vis impressa, it
follows, when that body is considered in any particular state,
whether of motion or rest, the degrees of resistance must either
indefinitely multiply, or decrease, according to all possible
degrees of the moving force. But when the same body is considered
absolutely, or without fixing any particular state, the resistance
is immutable; and all the degrees of it, which that body would exert
upon the accession of any impressed force, must be conceived as
actually in it. Nor can matter have any tendency contrary to that
resistance, otherwise it must be equal or superior. If equal, the
two contrary tendencies would destroy each other. If superior, the
resistance would be destroyed. Thus change would eternally succeed
to change without one intermediate instant, so that no time would be
assigned when any body was in any particular state. Gravitation
itself, the most simple and universal law, seems far from being a
tendency natural to matter; since it is found to act internally, and
not in proportion to the superfices of any body; which it would not
do, if it were only the mechanical action of matter upon matter.
{56} From all this, it appears, that matter considered merely as
such, is so far from having a principle of spontaneous motion, that
it is stubbornly inactive, and must eternally remain in the same
state in which it happens to be, except influenced by some other --
that is, some immaterial power. Of such a power the human soul is
evidently possessed; for every one is conscious of an internal
activity, and to dispute this would be to dispute us out of one of
the most real and intimate perceptions we have.

     Though a material automaton were allowed possible, how
infinitely would it fall short of that force and celerity which
every one feels in himself. how sluggish are all the movements which
fall under our observation. How slow and gradual their transitions
from one part of space to another. But the mind, by one
instantaneous effort, measures the distance from pole to pole, from
heaven to earth, from one fixed star to another; and not confined
within the limits of the visible creation, shoots into immensity
with a rapidity to which even that of lightning, or sunbeams, is no
comparison. Who then shall assign a period, which, though depressed
with so much dead weight, is ever active, and unconscious of fatigue
or relaxation? The mind is not only herself a principle of action,
but probably actuates the body, without the {57} assistance of any
intermediate power, both from the gradual command which she acquires
of its members by habit, and from a capacity of determining, in some
measure, the quantity of pleasure or pain which any sensible
perception can give her. Supposing the interposing power a spirit,
the same difficulty of spirit acting upon matter still remains. And
the volition of our own mind will as well account for the motion of
the body, as the formal interference of any other spiritual
substance. And we may as well ask, why the mind is not conscious of
that interposition, as why she is ignorant of the means by which she
communicates motion to the body.

     (3) It is always bad reasoning to draw conclusions from the
premises not denied by your adversary. Whoever, yet, of all the
assertors of the soul's immortality, presumed to make a monopoly of
this great privilege to the human race? Who can tell what another
state of existence may be, or whether every other species of animals
may not possess principles an immortal as the mind of man? But that
mode of reasoning, which militates against all our convictions,
solely on account of the unavoidable ignorance to which our sphere
in the universe subjects us, can never be satisfactory. Reason, it
is true, cannot altogether solve every doubt which arises concerning
this important truth. But neither is there any other {58} truth, of
any denomination whatever, against which sophistry may not conjure
up a multitude of exceptions. We know no mode of existence but those