«But the materialists,» said the astronomer, «urge that matter may have qualities with which we are unacquainted.»
«He who will determine,» returned Imlac, «against that which he knows because there may be something which he knows not; he that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if this conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that which is known may be overruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty.»
«Yet let us not,» said the astronomer, «too arrogantly limit the Creator's power.»
«It is no limitation of Omnipotence,» replied the poet, «to suppose that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the same number cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on that which is created incapable of cogitation.»
«I know not,» said Nekayah, «any great use of this question. Does that immateriality, which in my opinion you have sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal duration?»
«Of immateriality,» said Imlac, «our ideas are negative, and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay: whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its contexture and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or impaired.»
«I know not,» said Rasselas, «how to conceive anything without extension: what is extended must have parts, and you allow that whatever has parts may be destroyed.»
«Consider your own conceptions,» replied Imlac, «and the difficulty will be less. You will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk; yet an ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As is the effect, such is the cause; as thought, such is the power that thinks, a power impassive and indiscerptible.»
«But the Being,» said Nekayah, «whom I fear to name, the Being which made the soul, can destroy it.»
«He surely can destroy it,» answered Imlac, «since, however imperishable, it receives from a superior nature its power of duration. That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be annihilated by Him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority.»