I exift;

this

I am the fame being to-day to-day I was yesterday, and twenty years ago; principle, or being, within me, that thinks and

body with spirit, could create thinking matter, is just such a question, as, whether he could create a being effentially active and effentially inactive, capable of beginning motion, and at the fame time incapable of beginning motion questions, which, if we allow experience to be a rational ground of knowledge, we need not fcruple to anfwer in the negative. For these questions, according to the best lights that our rational faculties can afford, feem to us to refer to the production of an effect as truly impoffible, as round fquarenefs, hot cold, black whitenefs, or true falsehood.

Yet I am inclined to think, it is not by this argument that the generality of mankind are led to acknowledge the existence of their own minds. An evidence more direct, much more obvious, and not lefs convincing, every man difcovers in the inftinctive fuggeftions of nature. We perceive the existence of our fouls by intuition; and this I believe is the only way in which the vulgar perceive it. But their conviction is not on that account the weaker; on the contrary, they would think the man mad who fhould feem to entertain any doubts on this fubject.

One of the first thoughts that occur to Milton's Adam, when " new-waked from foundest fleep," is to inquire after the caufe of his exiftence:

"Thou fun, faid I, fair light! "And thou, enlighten'd earth, fo fresh and gay! "Ye hills, and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains, "And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell, "Tell, if ye faw, how came I thus, how here : "Not of myself; by fome great Maker then, "In goodness and in power pre-eminent. "Tell me, how I may know him, how adore, "From whom I have, that thus I move and live, "And feel that I am happier than I know."

Paradife Loft, viii. 273.

Of

i

and acts, is one permanent and individual principle, distinct from all other principles, beings, or things; thefe are dictates of internal fenfation natural to man, and univerfally acknowledged: and they are of fo great importance, that while we doubt of their truth, we can hardly be interested in any thing else whatsoever. If I were to believe, with fome authors, that my mind is perpetually changing, fo as to become every different moment a different thing, the remembrance of past, or the anticipation of future good or evil, could give me neither pleasure nor pain; yea, tho' I were to believe, that a cruel death would overtake me within an hour, I fhould be no more concerned, than if I were told, that a certain elephant, three thousand years hence, would be facrificed on

Of the reality of his own life, motion, and existence, it is
obfervable that he makes no queftion; and indeed it
would have been ftrange if he had. But Dryden, in
his opera called The ftate of Innocence, would needs at-
tempt an improvement on this paffage; and to make fu-
rer work, obliges Adam to prove his existence by argu-
ment, before he allows him to enter upon any other in-
quiry:

"What am I? or from whence? - For that I am
"I know, because I think: but whence I came,
"Or how this frame of mine began to be,

"What other being can disclose to me

?

Act 2. fcene 1.

Dryden, it seems, had read Des Cartes; but Milton had ftudied nature: Accordingly Dryden fpeaks like a metaphysician, Milton like a poet and philofopher.

the top of Mount Atlas. To a man who doubts the individuality or identity of his own mind, virtue, truth, religion, good and evil, hope and fear, are abfolutely nothing.

Metaphyficians have taken fome pains to confound our notions on the fubject of identity; and, by establishing the currency of certain ambiguous phrafes, have fucceeded fo well, that it is now hardly poffible for us to explain thefe dictates of our nature, according to common fenfe and common experience, in fuch language as fhall be liable to no exception. The misfortune is, that many of the words we must use, though extremely well understood, are either too fimple or too complex in their meaning, to admit a logical definition; fo that the caviller is never at a loss for an evasive reply to any thing we may advance. But I will take it upon me to affirm, that there are hardly any human notions more clearly, or more univerfally understood, than those we entertain concerning the identy both of ourselves and of other things, however difficult we may fometimes find it to exprefs thofe notions in proper words. And I will alfo venture to affirm, that the fentiments of the generality of mankind on this head are grounded on fuch evidence, that he who refufes to be convinced by it, acts irrationally, and cannot, confiftently with fuch refufal, believe any thing.

1. The existence of our own mind, as fomething different and diftinct from the boVOL. I. I dy,

dy, is univerfally acknowledged. I fay univerfally; having never heard of any nation of men upon earth, who did not, in their converfation and behaviour, fhow, by the plaineft figns, that they made this distinction. Nay, fo ftrongly are mankind impreffed with it, that the rudeft barbarians, by their incantations, their funeral folemnities, their traditions concerning invifible beings, and their hopes of a future ftate, feem to declare, that to the existence of the foul the body is not, in their opinion, neceffary. All philofophers, a few Epicureans and Pyrrhonists excepted, have acknowledged the existence of the foul, as one of the first and most unexceptionable principles of human fcience. Now whence could a notion fo univerfal arife? Let us examine our own minds, and we fhall find, that it could arife from nothing but confcioufnefs, a certain irrefiftible perfuafion, that we have a foul diftinct from the body. The evidence of this notion is intuitive; it is the evidence of internal fenfe. Reasoning can neither prove nor difprove it. DES CARTES, and his difciple MALEBRANCHE, acknowledge, that the existence of the human foul must be believed by all men, even by thofe who can bring themfelves to doubt of every thing else.

Mr Simon Browne, a learned and pious

* See his affecting ftory in the Adventurer, vol. 3. N° 88.

clergyman

clergyman of the last age, is perhaps the only perfon on record of whom there is reafon to think, that he seriously difbelieved the exiftence of his own foul. He imagined, that in confequence of an extraordinary interpofition of divine power, his rational foul was gradually annihilated, and that nothing was now left him, but a principle of animal life, which he held in common with the brutes. But where-ever the ftory of this excellent perfon is known, his unhappy mistake will be imputed to madness, and to a depravation of intellect, as real, and as extraordinary, as if he had disbelieved the existence of his body, or the axioms of mathematics.

2. That the thinking principle, which we believe to be within us, continues the fame through life, is equally felf-evident, and equally agreeable to the univerfal confent of mankind. If a man were to speak and act in the evening, as if he believed himfelf to have become a different perfon fince the morning, the whole world would pronounce him mad. Were we to attempt to disbelieve our own identity, we fhould labour in vain; we could as easily bring ourselves to believe, that it is poffible for the fame thing to be and not to be. But there is no reason to think, that this attempt was ever made by any man, not even by Mr HUME himfelf; though that author, in his Treatife of Human Nature, has afferted, yea, and proved too, (according to his notions of proof), that the human foul