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senses supports; that how short and imperfect soever the knowledge acquired by observation of the phenomena might be, he was contented with it, because it was knowledge acquired in God's way, that is, in the only way God has opened to our inquiries about the nature of things corporeal or spiritual: nay further, that if he could suspect himself to be deceived in this way, he would be contented still; he would conclude on this and other occasions, that whether things appear to him as they are absolutely, and such as the supreme intelligence knows them to be, or not, they appear to him such as it is fit for his nature that they should appear to him. On this undoubted truth he would rest his mind, instead of perplexing it about indeterminable questions, and of struggling presumptuously and vainly to know things otherwise than his nature and theirs admit that he should know them.

On such principles as these, though he could not affirm, he would not deny, the immortality of the soul. What indeed should tempt him to do so? In whatever world, in whatever state he is, he knows that the same God governs. What then has he to fear in one more than in another? Nothing surely, if he thinks as he ought to think of the all-perfect Being. Such God is. Let us not therefore humanise him. Let us not measure his perfections by ours, much less let us ascribe to him, as every system of theology does, under the notion of goodness, what would be partiality, nor under the notion of justice what would be cruelty in man. Let us not presume so much as to ascribe our perfections to him, even according to the highest conceptions we are able to frame of them, though we reject every imperfection conceivable by us, when it is imputed to him. "As we must not imagine with the Anthropomorphites (it is Malebranche who speaks well in this place, though very inconsistently with what he says in others,) that God has the human figure, because it seems to us the most perfect; we must not think neither that the mind of God has human thoughts, nor that it is like to ours, because we know nothing more perfect than our own minds." Such theology as this, and surely it is orthodox, makes our plain man to be flattered, not terrified, with any faint appearance of immortality in prospect, like Tully, Seneca, and other philosophers, who saw no more grounds in any thing they knew of the nature of the soul for this expectation, than he sees. He is ready to say of this immortality, what the auditor says in the first Tusculan disputation, " me verò delectat; idque primum ita esse velim, deinde, etiamsi non sit, mihi tamen persuaderi velim."

* Lib. 3, p. 2, c. 9.

He might very reasonably ask the metaphysical divine for what reason he clogs the belief of the soul's immortality with that of its immateriality, since the former is sufficient to answer all the ends of religion? The doctrine of future rewards and punishments (which is, no doubt, a great restraint on men, and which would be a greater, if it was not so scandalously abused by the ambition and avarice of priests) supposes the immortality of the soul only: and it is much more easy to make men conceive that it is immortal by the good pleasure of God, though material, than that it is an immaterial spirit, and immortal by the necessity of its nature, as God is self-existent by the necessity of his. One may wonder that men, who have adopted so many of the whimsical notions which they found in Plato, should not have borrowed a hint they might have found there, or that they rejected perhaps when they found it. The hint I mean is, that of souls mortal by their nature, that is, material, but such as should never die. "Solubiles, sed dissolvendæ nunquam." "Since you are generated, you are mortal, but you shall not die; for my will is strong enough to repair the defects of your nature," says the Supreme Being to the younger gods, the gods born of gods in the Timæus; and it is the least absurd thing Plato makes him say or do on that occasion. The neglect of this passage may be imputed to some theological purposes that seem to be better served by the hypothesis of immaterial souls, than by any other. But the vanity of the human heart, which has been flattered by divines in all ages, was to be flattered on. What served best to this purpose was taken from Plato: and how it was improved we need look no further than Tusculan, just now quoted, to find. There Tully, after a ridiculous panegyric on the human mind, which improved by philosophy he thinks able to discover all things in heaven and on earth, all that exists, in its beginning, progression, and end, runs a very profane parallel between the divine and human mind. If the first "be air or fire, snch is the last." If there be a fifth element, that new nature which " Aristotle first introduced, it must be common to both. Whatever has sense, intelligence, will, and the principles of life, is celestial and divine, and therefore necessary and eternal." This is the nature of man: and "God himself cannot be conceived any other way," than by analogy to it. That we frame our conceptions of the divine intelligence as well as we can, by analogy to our own, is true. We have no other way of framing them. But it will not follow that his nature is analogous to ours, nor that ours is like his, "Mens soluta quædem et libera, segregata ab omni concretione mortali, omnia sentiens et movens, ipsaque prædita motu sempiterno." Thus absurdly however did the disciples of Plato flatter human nature: and finding in the Bible that we are made

after the image of God, our divines have interpreted the passage according to these prejudices. They will not say directly, I suppose, that our souls are a portion of the divine essence, but what they say sometimes means this or nothing, and what they say always is but little different from it. Strange vanity! as they assume themselves to be exposed to eternal damnation, and the rest of mankind to be almost entirely damned, rather than to assume that their souls are immortal; so this immortality would not have charms sufficient for them, if it was not asserted to be essential to the nature of their souls.

Thus, I believe, our plain man would leave the matter: and thus I leave it too; having said, I hope, enough to show that the fondness philosophers have to raise hypotheses that cannot be raised on real ideas, such as have a known foundation in nature, that is, a known conformity with existence, is a principal occasion on which the mind exercises its artifice in framing such ideas and notions as are merely fantastical. That the mind exercises the same several other ways, and in some less obviously than in this, as it has been hinted above, I know full well. But, enough having been said to show that human knowledge is imperfect and precarious in its original, as well as slow and confined in its progress, and by one great example, which may serve instar omnium, that they, who pretend to guide the reason of mankind and to improve human knowledge, do nothing better in matters of the first philosophy, than substitute that which is imaginary in the place of that which is real, or in addition to it, in favor of their prejudices, their passions, and their interests; enough has been said for an essay concerning the Nature, Extent, and Reality of Human Knowledge.

ESSAY THE SECOND:

CONTAINING SOME

REFLECTIONS ON THE FOLLY AND PRESUMPTION OF PHILOSOPHERS, ESPECIALLY IN MATTERS OF THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY;

ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THEIR BOASTED SCIENCE; ON THE PROPAGATION OF ERROR AND SUPERSTITION;

AND ON THE PARTIAL ATTEMPTS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE TO REFORM THE ABUSES OF HUMAN REASON.

SECTION I.

He who asserts that there would be more real knowledge and more true wisdom among mankind, if there was less learning and less philosophy, may offend some men's ears by advancing a paradox; for such at least they will call it. But men who inquire without prejudice, and who dare to doubt, will soon discover that this seeming paradox is a most evident truth. They will find it such in almost every part of human science, and above all others in that which is called metaphysical and theological. The vanity of the vainest man alive, of some who call themselves scholars and philosophers, will be hurt; but they who seek truth without any other regard, and who prefer therefore very wisely even ignorance to error, will rejoice at every such discovery.

There was a time when navigators bent themselves obstinately to find a passage by the northeast or the northwest to Cathay. Neither frequent losses nor constant disappointment could divert them from these enterprises, as long as the fashionable folly prevailed. The passage was not found; the fashion wore out, and

the folly ceased. The bounds of navigation were set: and sufficient warning was both given and taken against any further attempts in those dark and frozen regions. Many such there are in the intellectual world: and many such attempts have been made there with no better success. But the consequence has not been the same. Neither examples nor experience have had their effect on philosophers, more fool-hardy than mariners: and where the former wandered to no purpose three thousand years ago, they wander to no purpose, at least to no good purpose, still.

"Il faut pousser à une porte pour sçavoir qu'elle nous est close," says Charron, somewhere in his Book of Wisdom. He says right, "pour sçavoir qu'elle nous est close." But when we know, or may know very certainly, by our own experience, and by that of all the strong men in philosophy, ancients and moderns, that a door is shut which no human force can open, they who continue to sweat and toil in shoving at it are most ridiculously employed. They who affect to guess at the objects they cannot see, and to talk as if the door stood wide open while they peep through the key hole, are employed still worse. The most ancient philosophers may be excused in great measure for attempting to open every door of science; though they cannot be so for imposing on mankind discoveries they never made. But they who followed these, in the course of philosophical generations, are inexcusable on the first head as well as the last; since what was curiosity in the others became presumption in them: and they scarcely made amends, by the good they did in advancing some real knowledge, for the hurt they did in entailing so much that is quite fantastical on posterity.

Tully confesses very frankly that nothing is so absurd which some philosopher or other has not said: and his own works would furnish sufficient proofs of the assertion, under the Epicurean, the Stoical, and the Academical characters particularly, if they were wanted. But this confession does not go far enough; and we may employ upon this occasion against philosophers the objection made against the Jesuits by some of their enemies. The absurdities of philosophers are not to be ascribed to the particular men alone who broached them in every philosophical age, but to their order and institution, if I may say so; the principles and spirit of which lead by necessary consequences to such absurdities. The first founders of philosophy laid these principles, and inspired this spirit in days of ignorance and superstition. Their followers have refined upon them, confirmed them, and added to them. Time and authority have established them all; the oldest and the grossest most. Words that have really no meaning are thought to have one, and are used accordingly.

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