202 HUME 



IX 



But in reality it is the gospel, and the gospel alone, that has 

 brought life and immortality to light. 1 



"1. Metaphysical topics suppose that the soul is im- 

 material, and that 'tis impossible for thought to belong to a 

 material substance. 2 But just metaphysics teach us that the 

 notion of substance is wholly confused and imperfect ; and that 

 we have no other idea of any substance, than as an aggregate of 

 particular qualities inhering in an unknown something. Matter, 

 therefore, and spirit, are at bottom equally unknown, and we 

 cannot determine what qualities inhere in the one or in the 

 other. 3 They likewise teach us that nothing can be decided 

 a priori concerning any cause or effect ; and that experience, 

 being the only source of our judgments of this nature, we 

 cannot know from any other principle, whether matter, by its 

 structure or arrangement, may not be the cause of thought. 

 Abstract reasonings cannot decide any question of fact or 

 existence. But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed 

 throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, 

 and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have 

 reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the 

 manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it 

 as a kind of paste or clay ; modifies it into a variety of forms 



1 "Now that 'Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to 

 light through the Gospel,' and that in the most literal sense, 

 which implies that the revelation of the doctrine is peculiar to 

 His Gospel, seems to be at least the most obvious meaning of 

 the Scriptures of the New Testament." Whately, I.e. p. 27. 



2 Compare Of the Immateriality of the Soul, Section V. of 

 Part IV., Book I., of the Treatise, in which Hume concludes 

 (I. p. 319) that, whether it be material or immaterial, "in both 

 cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul 

 are equally inconclusive ; and in both cases the moral argu- 

 ments and those derived from the analogy of nature are equally 

 strong and convincing." 



3 " The question again respecting the materiality of the soul 

 is one which I am at a loss to understand clearly, till it shall 

 have been clearly determined what matter is. "We know nothing 

 of it, any more than of mind, except its attributes. " Whately, 

 I.e. p. 66, 



