therefore the mind is not material." Again, "No substance can possess, at the same moment, two opposite qualities, for a substance' cannot be both black and white. The predominating qualities of bodies are always discoverable from fervidity, heat, from blackness, the colour (as it is unphilosophically called) black. But the mind is the reverse of this; for it can perceive opposites, and at the same moment have a notion of blackness and whiteness. But the imagination cannot create real sensations; for however intensely we may think of heat, we shall not become warm; or however long we may think of extension or breadth, the mind will neither become extended nor broad;* therefore the mind is not material." Again, "The faculties delight in the perception of corporeal objects, and indulging in sensual gratification; the faculty of sight, in beautiful forms; hearing, in harmonious sounds; the appetite of concupiscence, in the gratification of lust; and anger, in raging to excess; indulgence confirms and strengthens these faculties; the mind, on the contrary, is weakened and impaired; for the more it refrains from sensuality, the stronger and more vigorous does it become; the greater is its delight in contemplating the attributes of the Creator, and in its pursuit after those noble and permanet objects which are so superior to those which are lowly and material.†

+ See Disc. on the Nature of the Soul. Taylor's Proclus, p. 50. Milton imitates a passage in Plato. See Hurd on Imitation.

"But when lust,

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being."

This is an evident proof that the mind is neither body nor cor'poreal; for all things derive strength from congruities; but from contrarieties, weakness. Material gratification impairs the mind, abstinence from corporeal enjoyments confirms it."

Again, No sense can be employed from its appropriate end. The eye perceives nothing but objects of vision, the ear nothing but sounds; nor can any sense perceive itself, or its means of perception; for the sense of seeing neither perceives the eye nor vision, nor can the senses discover their own errors.* The eye beholds the sun (which is an hundred and sixty times larger than the earth) no bigger than the moon; yet it is ignorant of this; nor can it assign a cause for the inversion of trees on the margin of a river; and this applies to the other senses. But the mind receives at once the sensations of all the senses; and knows that such a voice proceeds from such a person, and that such a voice is not the voice of such a person."

After using some other arguments, to shew that the mind is not material, he proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the soul. "For a clearer notion of the soul, we should know that it survives the dissolution of the body; that death has no power over it; on the contrary, it is incompatible with annihilation, which may be thus demonstrated: Every perpetual existence, that is obnoxious to death, must enjoy perpetuity in act, and annihilation in potentiality; and in such a case, it is requisite that the subject of perpetuity in act, must be different from the subject of annihilation in potentiality. Because if the thing, which has perpetuity in act, has also annihilation in potentiality, it follows, that when annihilation in potentiality changes to act, perpetuity and annihilation are

"Nor doth the eye itself,

That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself

Not going from itself."

Troilus and Cressida.

I have seen a book, written by a Latin monk, which, amongst other things, attempts to prove, that the nose might perform the office of the eyes!

involved in one subject, and this is impossible. It is, therefore, necessary that the subject, which has perpetuity in act, should be distinct from that which has annihilation in potentiality. Annihilation in potentiality, will be the subject of that which enjoys perpetuity in act; therefore every being obnoxious to death, is a quality in a subject; and a quality must be either figure or adjunct. Annihilation, therefore, is only figure or accident. I have already shewn, that the mind or soul is not a quality in a subject; but that it is an essence subsisting of itself, neither body nor corporeal, therefore not liable to annihilation."

The Persians have attended to the subtleties and distinctions of metaphysics, without endeavouring to improve themselves by the light of experiment. They begin, as it has been remarked of the Greeks, where we (I mean the followers of Bacon and Locke) leave off.

I have already attempted to illustrate the philosophy of the Soofees, a system which is adopted by the few learned men in Persia ; and which seems, in early times, to have prevailed amongst the Jews; in India, amongst the disciples of the Vedanti school; and in Europe amongst the Theosophists.* Sir William Jones expresses, with great precision, the tenets of the Indian school, and which does not differ from the doctrines maintained by the Soofees of the present day. "The fundamental tenet of the Vedanti school, to which, in a more modern age, the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted not in denying the existence of matter; that is of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure; (to deny which would be lunacy) but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception: that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that external appearances and sensations are illusory, • See Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 222, 488. Sir William Jones, vol. i. p. 164.

and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment: an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained, in the present century, with great elegance, but with little public applause," &c. The Soofees consider themselves immersed in depravity by a union with matter: and, in the figurative style of their poets, lament the separation from their beloved, and solicit, with impatient ardour, a release from a material and earthly bondage.

The science of the Persians is, I believe, extremely confined. They have translations of Euclid, Ptolomy's alguma, and optics; the works of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and some other of the Grecian philosophers, which few of them read, and fewer understand. Their perverse predelection for judicial astrology excites them to the study of this science, merely that they may foretel the conjunction of the planets; and when they are able to do this with any degree of accuracy, they are accounted men of considerable science. They have two descriptions of Ephemeris, called Qumuree and Shumsee; the first, containing the conjunctions and opposition of the luminaries; and the second, the eclipses, the longitude and latitude of the stars, &c. but with what precision I cannot determine. They have, according to Fryer, some knowledge of geometry, algebra, and trigonometry, and have, amongst other of their books, some fragments of Archimedes. Fryer speaks handsomely of their astrolabes. I have seen some of their globes, made both of silver and of a brass, whch struck me to be tolerably correct. They put to me a number of questions concerning Yungi Dooneeya (America), and were astonished at the accounts I gave them of the extent of that continent, the height of its mountains, and the greatness of its rivers. Like the ancients, they conceive some part of the globe is uninhabitable; and maintain that, as you proceed

south, the heat becomes so intense, as to cause immediate death!

Their tracts upon law and theology are excessively voluminous; and their treatises upon logic, I have heard, are by no means contemptible.

Sir William Jones takes notice of a passage in Nizamee which alludes to the theory of attraction ;* others might be produced from Jamee which allude in an equally vague manner to this abstruse and obscure subject. The learning of Persia, however, is upon its decline: and they are not likely to throw light upon a subject, which the science and learning of Newton was unable to illustrate,

Having taken this review of their learning, I shall add but a few words upon the subject of their learned men.

It must be allowed that their acquisition in literature has not had the effect of softening their manners; they are, for the most part of them, unconscionable pedants, who would solemnly acquaint you that "divers philosophers have held, that the lips is a parcel of the mouth;" or, would ostentatiously display their learning in attempting to divide “ a hair 'twixt south and south-west side." It is difficult to converse with them without being involved in an argument; and the Koran is quoted as an authority, which it would be heresy to dispute. They are perpetually interrupting you for logical definitions, which branches out the argument into a thousand different parts. They argue more like an automaton than a raional being; and insist upon demonstrations when they know they cannot be given. But if they yield an implicit obedience to the dogmas of others, let them not be defrauded of their due; they can at least repeat what another has either written or discovered. And if their modes of life do not manifest the advantage of superior • Vol. i. p. 176.