Book II. retired from his body, which is no impoffible fuppofition for the men I have here to do with, who fo liberally allow life, without a thinking foul, to all other animals: These men cannot then judge it impoffible, or a contradiction, that the body fhould live without the foul, nor that the foul fhould fubfift and think, or have perception, even perception of happiness or mifery, without the body. Let us then, as I fay, fuppofe the foul of Caftor feparated, during his fleep, from his body, to think apart; let us fuppofe too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking, the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is fleeping without a foul; for if Caftor's foul can think, whilft Castor is afleep, what Caftor is never conscious of, it is no matter what place it chooses to think in. We have here then the bodies of two men with only one foul between them, which we will fuppofe to fleep and wake by turns, and the foul ftill thinking in the waking man, whereof the fleeping man is never confcious, has never the leaft perception. I ask then, Whether Caftor and Pollux, thus with only one foul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what the other is never confcious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as diftinct perfons as Caftor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were? And whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very miferable? Juft by the fame reason they make the foul and the man two perfons, who make the foul think apart what the man is not confcious of. For I fuppofe nobody will make identity of perfons to confift in the foul's being united to the very fame numerical particles of matter; for if that be neceffary to identity, it will be impoffible in that conftant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any man fhould be the fame perfon two days or two moments together.

§13. Impoffible to convince thofe that fleep without dreaming, that they think.

THUS, methinks, every drowfy nod fhakes their doctrine, who teach, that the foul is always thinking. Thofe at least who do at any time fleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that their thoughts are

fometimes for four hours bufy without their knowing of it, and if they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that fleeping contemplation, can give no

manner of account of it.

§14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain

urged.

It will perhaps be faid, that the foul thinks even in the foundeft fleep, but the memory retains it not. That the foul in a fleeping man should be this moment bufy athinking, and the next moment, in a waking man, not remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived, and would need fome better proof than bare affertion to make it be believed. For who can without any more ado, but being barely told fo, imagine, that the greatest part of men do, during all their lives, for feveral hours every day, think of fomething, which if they were asked, even in the middle of these thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of? Moft men, I think, pafs a great part of their fleep without dreaming. I once knew a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me, he had never dreamed in his life till he had that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was about the five or fix-and-twentieth year of his age. I fuppofe the world affords more fuch inftances; at least every one's acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of fuch as pafs most of their nights without dreaming.

§ 15. Upon this hypothefis the Thoughts of a fleeping Man ought to be most rational.

To think often, and never to retain it fo much as one moment, is a very useless fort of thinking; and the foul, in fuch a state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glais, which conftantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none; they difappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them; the looking-glafs is never the better for fuch ideas, nor the foul for fuch thoughts. Perhaps it will be faid, that in a waking man the materials of the body are employed, and made ufe of, in thinking, and that the memory of thoughts is retained by the impreffions

that are made on the brain, and the traces there left after fuch thinking; but that in the thinking of the foul, which is not perceived in a fleeping man, there the foul thinks apart, and making no ufe of the organs of the body, leaves no impreffions on it, and confequently no menzory of fuch thoughts. Not to mention again the abfurdity of two diftinct perfons, which follows from this fuppofition, I answer farther, That whatever ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body, it is reafonable to conclude, it can retain without the help of the body too; or else the foul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts; if it cannot lay them up for its ufe, and be able to recal them upon occafion; if it cannot reflect upon what is past, and make use of its former experiences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what purpofe does it think? They who make the foul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they condemn for allowing it to be nothing but the fubtileft parts of matter. Characters drawn on duft, that the first breath of wind effaces, or impreffions made on a heap of atoms, or animal fpirits, are altogether as ufeful, and render the fubject as noble as the thoughts of a foul that perish in thinking; that once out of fight, are gone for ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses; and it is hardly to be conceived, that our infinitely wife Creator should make fo admirable a faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehenfible Being, to be fo idly and ufelefsly employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think conftantly, without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we will examine it, we shall not find, I fuppose, the motion of dull and fenfelefs matter any where in the univerfe made fo little ufe of, and fo wholly thrown away.

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§ 16. On this Hypothefis, the Soul must have Ideas not derived from Senfation or Reflection, of which there is no Appearance.

It is true, we have fometimes instances of perception, whilft we are asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts; but how extravagant and incoherent for the moft part they are, how little conformable to the perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need not be told. This I would willingly be fatisfied in, whether the foul when it thinks thus apart, and as it were feparate from the body, acts lefs rationally than when conjointly with it or no? If its separate thoughts be lefs rational, then these men must say, that the foul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the body; if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams fhould be, for the most part, fo frivolous and irrational, and that the foul fhould retain none of its more rational foliloquies and meditations.

§ 17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can

know it.

THOSE Who fo confidently tell us that the foul always actually thinks, I would they would alfo tell us what thofe ideas are that are in the foul of a child before, or just at the union with the body, before it hath received any by fenfation? The dreams of fleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together. It is ftrange, if the foul has ideas of its own that it derived not from fenfation or reflection, (as it must have, if it thought before it received any impreffion from the body) that it fhould never, in its private thinking (fo private, that the man himself perceives it not) retain any of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new difcoveries. Who can find it reasonable, that the foul fhould, in its retirement, during fleep, have fo many hours thoughts, and yet never light on any of those ideas it borrowed not from fenfation or reflection; or, at least, preferve the memory of none but fuch, which being occafioned from

the body, muft needs be lefs natural to a spirit? It is ftrange the foul should never once in a man's whole life recal over any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had, before it borrowed any thing from the body, never bringing into the waking man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of the cafk, and manifeftly derive their original from that union. If it always thinks, and fo had ideas before it was united, or before it received any from the body, it is not to be fuppofed but that during fleep it recollects its native ideas, and during that retirement from communicating with the body, whilft it thinks by itself, the ideas it is bufied about fhould be, fometimes at least, those more natural and congenial ones, which it had in itfelf underived from the body, or its own operations about them, which, fince the waking man never remembers, we must from this hypothefis conclude, either that the foul remembers fomething that the man does not, or else that memory belongs only to fuch ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about them.

§ 18. How knows any one that the Soul always thinks ? For if it be not a felf-evident Propofition, it needs Proof.

I WOULD be glad alfo to learn from these men, who fo confidently pronounce, that the human foul, or, which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it, nay, how they come to know that they themselves think, when they themselves do not perceive it? This, I am afraid, is to be fure without proofs, and to know without perceiving; it is, I fufpect, a confufed notion, taken up to ferve an hypothefis, and none of thofe clear truths that either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence to deny; for the most that can be faid of it is, that it is poffible the foul may always think, but not always retain it in memory; and, I fay, it is as poffible that the foul may not always think, and much more probable that it fhould fometimes not think, than that it fhould often think, and that a long while together, and