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the mind conftantly to them, forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus, the first years are ufually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Mens business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without, and fo, growing up in a conftant attention to outward fenfations, feldom make any confiderable reflection on what paffes within them, till they come to be of riper years, and some scarce ever at all.

§ 9. The Soul begins to have Ideas, when it begins to perceive.

To ask at what time a man has first any ideas, is to ask when he begins to perceive, having ideas, and perception, being the fame thing. I know it is an opinion, that the foul always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas in itself conftantly as long as it exifts, and that actual thinking is as infeparable from the foul as actual extenfion is from the body; which, if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man's ideas, is the fame as to inquire after the beginning of his foul; for, by this account, foul and its ideas, as body and its extenfion, will begin to exift both at the fame time.

The Soul thinks not always, for this wants

Proofs.

BUT whether the foul be fuppofed to exift antecedent to, or coeval with, or fome time after, the first rudiments or organization, or the beginnings of life in the body, I leave to be difputed by thofe who have better thought of that matter. I confefs myself to have one of thofe dull fouls, that doth not perceive itfelf always to contemplate ideas, nor can conceive it any more neceffary for the foul always to think, than for the body always to move, the perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the foul, what motion is to the body, not its effence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be fuppofed ever fo much the proper action of the foul, yet it is not necessary to suppose that it fhould be always thinking, always in action; that, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preferver of things, who never flumbers nor fleeps, but

;

is not competent to any finite being, at leaft not to the foul of man. We know certainly by experience, that we fometimes think, and thence draw this infallible confequence, that there is fomething in us that has a power to think; but whether that substance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no farther affured than experience informs us; for to fay that actual thinking is effential to the foul, and infeparable from it, is to beg what is in question, and not to prove it by reason which is neceffary to be done, if it be not a self-evident propofition. But whether this, that the foul always thinks, be a felf-evident propofition that every body affents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is doubted, whether I thought all last night or no; the question being about a matter of fact, it is begging it, to bring as a proof for it, an hypothefis, which is the very thing in difpute, by which way one may prove any thing; and it is but fuppofing that all watches, whilft the balance beats, think, and it is fufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all laft night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothefis on matter of fact, and make it out by fenfible experience, and not prefume on matter of fact, because of his hypothefis, that is, because he fuppofes it to be fo; which way of proving amounts to this, that I must neceffarily think all last night, because another fuppofes I always think, though I myself cannot perceive that I always do fo.

But men, in love with their opinions, may not only fuppofe what is in queftion, but allege wrong matter of fact. How elfe could any one make it an inference of mine, that a thing is not, because we are not fenfible of it in our fleep? I do not fay there is no foul in a man, because he is not fenfible of it in his fleep; but I do fay, he cannot think at any time, waking or fleeping, without being fenfible of it. Our being fenfible of it, is not neceflary to any thing, but to our thoughts, and to them it is, and to them it will always be neceffary, till we can think without being confcious of it.

§ 11. It is not always confcious of it. IGRANT that the foul in a waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being awake; but whether fleeping, without dreaming, be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's confideration; it being hard to conceive, that any thing fhould think, and not be confcious of it. If the foul doth think in a fleeping man, without being confcious of it, I ask, whether, during fuch thinking, it has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or mifery? I am fure the man is not, no more than the bed or earth he lies on; for to be happy or miferable, without being confcious of it, feems to me utterly inconsistent and impoffible. Or if it be poffible that the foul can, whilft the body is fleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments and concerns, its pleasure or pain apart, which the man is not confcious of, or partakes in; it is certain that Socrates afleep and Socrates awake is not the fame perfon; but his foul when he fleeps, and Socrates the man, confifting. of body and foul when he is waking, are two perfons, fince waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for that happiness or mifery of his foul which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he fleeps, without perceiving any thing of it, no more than he has for the happiness or mifery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take wholly away all consciousnefs of our actions and fenfations, efpecially of pleafure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to know wherein to place perfonal identity.

§ 12. If a fleeping Man thinks without knowing it, the fleeping and waking Man are two Perfons.

THE foul, during found fleep, thinks, fay these men. Whilft it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of thofe of delight or trouble, as well as any other per-ceptions; and it must neceffarily be confcious of its own perceptions. But it has all this apart; the fleeping man, it is plain, is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us fuppofe then the foul of Caftor, while he is fleeping,

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: Thefe 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 choofes 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 Caflor is afleep, what Caftor is never confcious 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 afk 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 reafon 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 busy 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 foundelt fleep, but the memory retains it not. That the foul in a fleeping man fhould be this moment busy athinking, and the next moment, in a waking man, not remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all thofe 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 afked, 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 fcholar, 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 moft of their nights without dreaming.

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

To think often, and never to retain it fo much as one moment, is a very ufelefs 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 vanifh, 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 impreflions

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