^46 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Eook III. 



of our exlllence \yc do not know the eflcncc of thing?, wc can only 

 judge of their nature from their adions and operations. Now the 

 operation of our intelleftual mind is thinking and reafoning ; which 

 it is impoflible that we can conceive to be performed by body, 

 by the animal mind which moves our bodies, or by the vegetable 

 mind which digefts and concodls our victuals and by which wc 

 grov/ and are nourifhed. And there is another operation of our in- 

 tciledual mind, and that is, governing our bodies, our animal and 

 vep-etable lives, and, in fhort, all our little kingdom. Now it is 

 impoflible to conceive that this can be done by body, any more 

 than thinking and reafoning, with which it is intimately con- 

 neded. 



The operations of our intelledual mind are fo eflentially different 

 from thofe of body, that I have concluded, in that part of this vo- 

 lume to which I have referred, that it is a being of a quite different 

 kind, not a material being, fuch as the body in which it dwells, but 

 an immaterial being. And if fo, how can we fuppofe, that the ex- 

 tindion of our body fhould carry with it the extindiou likewife of 

 our intelledual mind. It might be as well faid that the confequence 

 of a man's houle falling muft be the death of the man. If, indeed, 

 it fell upon him, it might be his death : But it will not be faid that 

 our intelledual mind can perilli in that way. 



Befides thefe arguments, from the nature of our intelledual mind 

 and our body, there is one that I have mentioned from the nature of 

 things, which I think is unanfwerable ; and it is this, that there is 

 no annihilation of any thing in the univerfe ; nor indeed have we 

 fo much as the idea of any thing being reduced to nothing, any 

 more than being made out of nothing. Neither are our bodies an ex- 

 ception to this general law of nature ; for even they are not reduced 

 to nothing when we die, but are only diffolved and reduced to earth 



and 



