'l66 ON TH"E TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 



form, fhould loofe itfelf from its grofs material fhell, 

 for enjoying its exigence in completer freedom. 



But though this be not felf-contradictory : yet it is 

 certainly deficient in proofs that it is real, and confe- 

 quently this opinion is a glaring inftance of the levity of 

 the human underftanding, which adopts or rejects a 

 proportion without any reafon, but merely as blind 

 chance fhall direct. The mind of man is every where 

 In its operations alike, and obferves among uncivilized 

 nations the very fame laws by which it is directed 

 among the moft polite. When the opinions of ruds 

 and uncultivated people feem to us to be void of foun- 

 dation, and when we from thence conclude, that thefe 

 people have adopted them without any reafon : we then 

 commit, from a mortfightednefs which does not always, 

 prevent us from being proud, a manifeft act of in- 

 justice ; by fondly imagining that there is no reafon, 

 becaufe we happen to fee none. There is no tenet, 

 however ridiculous, believed in any part of the wide 

 furface of the globe, which has not its reafons with, 

 them that believe it. 



And what reafons then can favage nations have for 

 believing the voluntary removal of the foul frc m the 

 body ? No other than experience itfelf. That they 

 lie immovably on one fpot during fleep, they know 

 from experience ; and that, during this quiet lituation 

 of the body, they vifit diftant regions, difcourfe with 

 diftant and long-deceafed people, they know likewife 

 from experience. The livelinefs of fenfation is even 

 in moft cafes with our philofophers the criterion 

 whereby feniible impreffions are diftinguifhed from 

 mere fancies; and with fuch as have not deeply re- 

 flected, 



