AND IMMATERIALISM. 



331 



ceiving the entire dissolution and dispersion of the percipient as well as 

 impercipient parts of the animal machine, of which all the atoms may be- 

 come afterward constituent portions of other intelligent beings, it renders a 

 resumed individuality almost, if not altogether, impossible.* 



The idea that the essence or texture of the soul consists either wholly or 

 in part of spiritualized, ethereal, gaseous, or radiant matter, capable of com- 

 bining with the grosser matter of the body, and of becoming an object of 

 sense, seems to avoid the difficulties inherent to both systems. It says to 

 the materialist, matter is not necessarily corruptible ; as a believer in the Bible, 

 you admit that it is not so upon your own principle, which maintains that the 

 body was incorruptible when it first issued from the hands of its Maker, and 

 that it will be incorruptible upon its resurrection. It says to the immate- 

 rialist, the term immaterial conveys no determinate idea ; it has been forcibly 

 enlisted into service, and at the same time by no means answers the purpose 

 that was intended. It tells him that it is a term not to be found in the Scrip- 

 tures, which, so far from opposing the belief that the soul, spirit, or immortal 

 part of man, is either wholly or in combination, a system of radiant or ethe- 

 real matter, seem rather, on the contrary, to countenance it, not only, as I 

 have already observed, by expressly asserting that it was originally formed 

 out of a divine breath, aura, or vapour, but by presenting it to us under some 

 such condition in every instance in which departed spirits are stated to have 

 reappeared. 



That a principle of the same kind, though under a less active and elaborate 

 modification, appertains to the different tribes of brutes, there can, I think, 

 be no fair reason to doubt. Yet it by no means follows that in them it must 

 be also immortal. Matter, as we have already seen, is not necessarily cor- 

 ruptible, nor have we any reason to suppose that whatever is immaterial is 

 necessarily incorruptible. Immortality is in every instance a special gift of 

 the Creator ; and so wide is the gulf that exists between the intelligence of 

 man and that of the brute tribes, that there can be no difficulty in conceiving 

 where the line is drawn, and the special endowment terminates. It is an at- 

 tribute natural to the being of man, merely because his indulgent Maker has 

 made it so; but there is nothing either in natural or revealed religion that 

 can lead us to the same conclusion in respect of brutes ; and hence, to speak 

 of their natural immortality is altogether visionary and unphilosophical. 



In rea,lity, the difference between this suggested hypothesis and that of the 

 general body of immaterialists, is little more than verbal. For there are few 

 of them who do not conceive in their hearts (with what logical strictness I 

 stay not to inquire) that the soul, in its separate state, exists under some 

 such shadowy and evanescent form ; and that, if never suffered to make its 

 appearance in the present day, it has thus occasionally appeared in earlier 

 ages, and for particular purposes. Yet what can in this manner become 

 manifest to material senses, must have at least some of the attributes of mat- 

 ter in its texture, otherwise it could produce no sensible effect or recognition. 

 From what remote source universal tradition may have derived this common 

 idea of disimbodied spirits, I pretend not to ascertain ; the inquiry would, 

 nevertheless, be curious, and might be rendered important : it is a pleasing 

 subject, and imbued with that tender melancholy that peculiarly befits it for 

 a mind of sensibility and fine taste. Its universality, independently of the 

 sanction afforded to it by revealed religion, is no small presumption of its 

 being founded in fact. But I throw out the idea rather as a speculation to be 

 modestly pursued, than as a doctrine to be precipitately accredited. Enough, 

 and more than enough, has been offered, to show that in the abstruse subject 

 before us, nothing is so becoming as humility; that we have no pole-star to 

 direct us ; no clew to unriddle the perplexities of the labyrinth in which we 

 are wandering ; that every step is doubtful ; and that to expatiate is perhaps 

 only to lose ourselves. To show this has been my first object ; my second 



• See the author's Life of Lucretius, prefixed to his translation of the poem De Rerum Natura, vol. i, p. 92. 



