98 DOCTRINE^OF MATERIALISM, 



had entirely forgotten the English language, 

 and the occurrences of the latter years of his 

 life. 



The opinions which are entertained respect- 

 ing the materiality of the soul, have not even 

 the merit of novelty in them ; they had been 

 entertained by different men, at remote periods, 

 as well as in more modern days : by none, how- 

 ever, have they been proved to be false and 

 absurd, (by arguments more legitimate,) than 

 by Dr. S. CLARKE, a century and a half ago, 

 in the controversy which he maintained with 

 Mr. DODWELL, the materialist. In the hope 

 that the force of his reasoning may produce the 

 same conviction to others that it has done to 

 me, I shall, for that purpose, select a passage 

 on the subject from his valuable work : " That 

 the soul," says he, " cannot possibly be mate- 

 rial, is demonstrable from the single considera- 

 tion of bare sense or consciousness itself; for 

 matter being a divisible substance, consisting 

 always of separable, nay, of actually separate 

 and distinct parts, it is plain that unless it 

 were essentially conscious, (in which case every 

 particle of matter must consist of innumerable 

 separate and distinct consciousnesses,) no sys- 

 tem of it, in any possible composition or divi- 

 sion, can be one individual conscious being. 

 For supposing three or four hundred particles of 

 matter, at a mile or any given distance one 



