A final argument for the soul's immateriality may be thus stated :-Every action necessarily supposes the pre existence of the actor. And if the soul of man be material, matter must have existed previous to that consciousness, which is dependant upon the modification of it; aud the conclusion is certain,-that consciousness cannot be an essential property of it. And no adventitious acquisition of quality, can communicate a volition, of which both acquisition and quality are naturally destitute; nor incorporate with the identity of a substance, which is of itself inert, and therefore incongruous to its nature. And if so, there must, be an IMMATERIAL PRINCIPLE IN MAN. solving the union between soul and body, it is hard to say. The violence which in some cases can be survived, and the slight occasions which in others prove mortal, and dissolve this compact, imperiously for ce this truth upon the mind, that we know not with certainty in what this union consists, nor upon what secret ties it depends. The attenuated fibres, if such they are, whien Lold vitality and inertness together, are too minute for discovery, and lodged in those secret recesses which anatomical penetration can never reach. Certain it is, that the union must be indissoluble while life continues; and therefore, the soul cannot have an immediate connexion with those floating particles of flesh and blood, which are thrown off by effluvia and respiration, and supplied by nutrition. We are, therefore, naturally carried to some stamen of personality, which cannot be exposed, either to fluctuation or decay: in this seat of personality, it is more probable, that the idenity of man consists. To this permanent principle, we may conceive the immaterial spirit to be united in our present state; and though separated from it hy death, restored again to this union in the resurrection, which it will preserve to all eternity. Admitting this permanent principle to exist, "in what the identity of the body consists," will remain no longer an undecided question; it must consist in the immoveable stamen of personality, which is equally removed from mutation and decay. The permanency of this principle of identity, will, no doubt, preclude it from incorporating with other bodies, and losing its own identity in the identity of another. The floating particles of flesh and blood, which form the general mass, and which occasionally adhere to this principle, have, perhaps, but little or no connexion with the identity of man. Rendered indissoluble in itself by the power of the Almighty, it may continue incorruptible during its repose in the grave; while the floating particles of the body, may be scattered with the winds of heaven, But when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, then this stamen of identity, which was sown in weakness, shall be raised in power; and what was sown a natural, shall be raised a spiritual body; and, restored to an union with its immortal partner, it shall be for ever removed from separation or change. God, however, giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed its own body. But the resurrection is not my present subject. There are, perhaps, but few cases, in which this theory can derive more evidence from fact and incident, than in those of suspended animation; for although in these cases, a torpor has overspread the general mass, yet this permanent principle must preserve its union with the spirit The external obstructions, which occasion a suspension of animation, may op press those springs of action, that are necessary to animate the remoter parts of the corporeal mass; and, retarded in their operations, a general languor may prevail; but the internal union between the two natures cannot be dissolved, while animation is within the reach of restoration; and I conceive that it is an internal separation between these two natures which can alone occasion certain death. PART II. ILLUSTRATION OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE, MODES, AND POSSIBILITY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SOUL, CONSIDERED. SECTION I. Death.....Definition of it. IN the unbounded empire of human language, there is, perhaps, no term to which such strange and preposterous ideas have been annexed, as to that of Death. The Orientals have spiritualized it into an angel, the Moralists have degraded it into a monster, the Rhetorician's art has subjoined to it the idea of personification; while the poet's imagination has lent him "his meagre aspect, and his naked bones." All these ideas are, however, but the creatures of a prolific fancy, utterly devoid of any real existence in nature, and totally unfounded in fact. To strike the passions, and animate the feelings, sentiments like these are undoubtedly judicious and appropriate; but it is the province of philosophical disquisition, to disrobe realities of the trappings of fancy, and to present them to the world, in the genu K ine features of their native forms. While the embel lishments of fancy are thus added to a mere abstraction of the mind, the inquirer is too apt to be misled in his investigations. Hence "Death and his image rising in the brain, But setting aside these things, as the creatures of a warm imagination, let us inquire what is Death? It is certain, that death must either have a positive or a relative existence. If the former, death must exist whether any thing die or not; but this is absolutely impossible, for it supposes death, while it supposes nothing to die. If nothing were capable of dissolution or decay, it would be contradictory to admit any idea of death. It is the decay and dissolution of Beings, which give rise to the idea of death; and therefore death can have no positive existence. If, then, death can have no positive existence, it can only exist in relation to those Beings, who are capable of undergoing dissolution, privation, or annihilation; and therefore, in these relations it is, that we must look for every conception we have of death. The most simple notion (if notion it may be termed), which we can form of death, is, that it is the re verse of life; and that it deprives of animation, that subject which falls beneath its power. When death is occasioned by dissolution, I understand it to be a separation of those parts or properties of any Being, which are necessarily united, in order to the existence and identity of that Being. By privation, I mean the subtracting something from any Being, without which, that Being cannot subsist. And by annihilation, I mean, not only the destruction of any and every mdification which it might have assumed, but the utter destruction of all Being; and the reduction of any substance to an absolute nonentity. If, therefore, the soul, which is an immaterial substance, perish, it must be in one of these three ways. SECTION II. The Soul cannot perish by Dissolution, Privation, or A..nihilation. IF the soul perishes through dissolution, it must be by having those parts disunited, of which it is composed. But this cannot possibly be; because the soul is not an assemblage of distinct substances, but, as has been already proved, a simple, uncompounded, substance; and therefore has no parts to be dissolved. To suppose any substance capable of being dissolved, which has no parts, is a contradiction-it supposes a separation of parts, in a Being which has no parts to be separated. A Being, which has no parts included in the abstract idea of its existence, can never have any thing taken from it; and where nothing can be taken away, that Being must necessarily be incapable of dissolution. An exclusion of all parts, is necessary to the existence of an immaterial substance; and to suppose a Being to be dissolved, from the very nature of whose existence a capacity of dissolution is necessarily excluded, is a flat contradiction ;-it is supposing a Being to be capable, and yet incapable of dissolution, at the same time. Whatever has parts, cannot be immaterial; and what has no parts, can never lose them. To suppose an immaterial substance to have parts, destroys its immateriality; for it is a contradiction to suppose that to be immaterial, which by its parts is demonstrated |