Man is an acting, feeling, and thinking being; this is all we know of the matter: it is not given to us to know either what renders us feeling or thinking, or what makes us act, or what causes us to be. The acting faculty is to us as incomprehensible as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is not so much to conceive how this body of clay has feelings and ideas as to conceive how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings.
Behold on one hand the soul of Archimedes, and on the other that of a simpleton; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, then they think always and independently of the body, which cannot act without them. If they think by their own nature, can a soul, which is incapable of performing a single arithmetical operation, be of the same species as that which has measured the heavens? If it is the organs of the body that have made Archimedes think, why does not my idiot think, seeing that he is better constituted than Archimedes, more vigorous, digesting better, performing all his functions better? Because, say you, his brain is not so good; but you suppose this; you have no knowledge of it. No difference has ever been found among sound brains that have been dissected; indeed, it is very likely that the brain-pan of a blockhead would be found in a better state than that of Archimedes, which has been prodigiously fatigued, and may be worn and contracted.
Let us then conclude what we have concluded already, that we are ignorant of all first principles. As for those who are ignorant and self-sufficient, they are far below the ape.
Now then dispute, ye choleric arguers; present memorials against one another; abuse one another; pronounce your sentences—you who know not a syllable of the matter!
SECTION V.
Warburtons Paradox on the Immortality of the Soul.
Warburton, the editor and commentator of Shakespeare, and Bishop of Gloucester, using English liberty, and abusing the custom of vituperating against adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch; and to conclude from this very proof, that the mission of Moses, which he calls "legation," was divine. The following is an abstract of his book, which he himself gives at the commencement of the first volume:
"1. That to inculcate the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being of civil society.
"2. That all mankind [wherein he is mistaken], especially the most wise and learned nations of antiquity, have concurred in believing and teaching, that this doctrine was of such use to civil society.
"3. That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did it make part of, the Mosaic dispensation.