These are the leading points in the results of human experience as to the nature of mind and the laws of the system of which it is a part.
CHAPTER V.
KNOWLEDGE GAINED BY REASON AND EXPERIENCE AS TO A FUTURE STATE.
We have shown that, independently of a revelation, we have no sources of knowledge except the intuitions reasoning and experience. Hereafter we will, as is often done, include the two first in the term reason.
We have seen what knowledge has been furnished by human experience as to the nature of mind and the laws of the present system in which it is placed. We will now inquire as to the teachings of reason and experience in regard to the future.
As to the question of the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body, we have only one of the intuitive truths for our guide, viz., "things will continue as they are and have been till there is evidence of a cause for change," or, in other words, things will continue according to past experience till there is some evidence to the contrary.
It has been the uniform experience of mankind that the human mind passes through various states of existence extremely different in nature and continuance. The first state is that in which the mind seems to have no susceptibilities but of sensation, and to be utterly destitute of all the properties of a rational intellect. By a slow and gradual process, new and successive powers seem to be called into existence, and what seemed among the lowest grades of animal existence becomes the glory and lord of this lower world. Yet, in the full exercise of all the faculties of a rational and moral nature, there is a perpetual recurrence of periods in which all evidences of the existence of such faculties cease. In a profound sleep, or in a deep swoon, no proof of rational existence remains either to the being thus affected or to the observers of this phenomenon. As the extreme of old age approaches, the glories of the mind begin to fade away, until man sometimes passes into a state of second childhood. There are times, also, when changes in the material system derange all the power of intellect, and sometimes reduce what was once a rational mind to a state of entire fatuity, and then, again, the mental powers are restored.
The experience of mankind, then, on this subject is this: that the mind is an existence which passes through multiplied and very great changes without being destroyed. The soul continues to exist after changes as great as death, and in many respects similar to it, such, for example, as the event of birth, and of sleep, and we have never known a mind destroyed by such changes. The argument, then, is, that as things will be in agreement with past experience, the soul will continue to go through other changes without being destroyed, unless there is some reason to the contrary.
There can be no reason found to the contrary, for there is no evidence that the event called death is any thing more than a separation of the spirit from its material envelope, nor is there any evidence against the supposition that it may be an event which introduces the mind into a more perfect state of existence.
It appears that losing various parts of the body does not at all affect the operations of mind; that by the perpetual changes that are taking place in the body, every particle of it, after a course of years, is dissevered from its connection with the spirit, and is supplied by other matter. The soul is thus proved to be so connected with a material body that it may lose the whole of it by a slow process without being the least injured, and therefore we have the evidence of experience that it may be separated from the body without any detriment to its powers and faculties.