3. Obfervations upon Vindiciae mentis, 1702. contains 88 pages. 4. Obfervations upon Pfychologia, 1703. of 132 pages.

5. Obfervations upon Mr. Broughton's Pfychologia, Part II. of 55 pages. 6. Obfervations upon Turner's Vindication of the separate existence. of 55 pages.

7. Obfervations upon Doctor Sherlock's difcourfe concerning the happiness of good men in the next world, 1704. of 115 pages*.

Dr. Coward's title I have adopted, and this performance is called, a Survey of the Search after Souls; not only in accommodation to the nature of the inquiry itself; but also because the Doctor

• This account of that volume is inferted to gratify the curious: for Doctor Coward's works are Ycarce.

Doctor feems to have laid the foundation, and furnished the materials, ufed by later writers in the fcheme of mechanism, in his fecond and third volumes on the subject, which are so denominated.

Since these papers were drawn up, I have had the pleasure of reading the ingenious and reverend Mr. RICHARD PRICE's review of principal queftions, &c. from which I fhall borrow fome illuftrations.

CHAP.

Obfervations taken from Dr. S. CLARKE'S Letters to Dodwel. A. D. 1718. which concern the metaphyfical argument for the foul's immateriality, from its confciousness.

HE powers and abilities of an human Soul, its intellectual and moral operations, has been a subject which justly employed the most venerable pens in past ages, as well as in the prefent. And of all science, this feems to be the most familiar and interesting. It is extremely neceffary in an investigation of moral truth, and moral obligation.

We are not qualified for making any just estimate of character, unless we give some

attention

attention to the nature and design of the intellectual confcious ability; and much less can we form any just expectation of the final confequences of this finished probation of man.

Consciousness, fais the Doctor, in the most Strict and exact fenfe of the word, is, the reflex act by which I know that I think, and that my thoughts and actions are my own and not another's a.

For if the brain or fpirits be the fubject of confcioufnefs; and the parts of the brain or Spirits be in perpetual flux and change; it will follow, that that confciousness, by which I not only remember that certain things were done many years fince, but also am confcious, that they were done by me, by the very fame individual confcious being who now remembers them: it will follow, that that consciousness is transferred from one fubject to another; that is to fay, that it is a real quality which fubfifts without inbering in any fubject at all®.

It is true, my affirming consciousness to be an individual power, is not giving an account of what consciousness is; neither was it intended to be fo. Every man feels and knows by experience what confcioufnefs is, better than

any

• P. 93. comp. 129.

e P. 102.