200 HUME 



IX 



mere fiction of the imagination, This conclusion 

 is nothing but a rigorous application of Berkeley's 

 reasoning concerning matter to mind, and it is 

 fully adopted by Kant. 1 



Having arrived at the conclusion that the 

 conception of a soul, as a substantive thing, is 

 a mere figment of the imagination ; and that, 

 whether it exists or not, we can by no possibility 

 know anything about it, the inquiry as to the 

 durability of the soul may seem superfluous. 



Nevertheless, there is still a sense in which, 

 even under these conditions, such an inquiry is 

 justifiable. Leaving aside the problem of the 

 substance of the soul, and taking the word " soul " 

 simply as a name for the series of mental 

 phenomena which make up an individual mind ; 

 it remains open to us to ask, whether that series 

 commenced with, or before, the series of 

 phenomena which constitute the corresponding 

 individual body ; and whether it terminates with 

 the end of the corporeal series, or goes on after 

 the existence of the body has ended. And, in 

 both cases, there arises the further question, 

 whether the excess of duration of the mental 

 eeries over that of the body, is finite or in- 

 finite. 



1 "Our internal intuition shows no permanent existence, for 

 the Ego is only the consciousness of my thinking." " There is 

 no means whatever by which we can learn anything respecting 

 the constitution of the soul, so far as regards the possibility of 

 its separate existence." Kritik von den Paralogismen der reinen 

 Vernunft. 



