The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

receive the notices of many things by those nerves and organs which are the instruments of sensation; but if any of those avenues to it be stopped, that branch of its knowledge is for a time cut off. If those tracks in the brain, or those marks, whatever they are and wherever they are imprinted, upon which our memory and images of things seem to depend, are filled up or overcast by any vapor, or otherwise darkened, it can read them no more till the cloud is dispersed. (For it cannot read what is not legible, and indeed for the present not there.) And since even in abstracted reflections the mind is obliged to make use of words,588 or some kind of signs, to fix its ideas and to render them tractable and stable enough to be perused, compared, etc., and this kind of language depends upon memory, while this is intermitted, the use of the other is taken away, with all that depends upon it. This is the present state of the soul, and from hence the reason appears in some measure: why we do not think in sound sleep, etc.; but it does not follow from hence, that the soul cannot subsist and act under more enlarged circumstances. That, which being confined to the body, and able to act only according to the opportunities this affords, can now perceive visible objects only with two eyes (at two windows589), because there are no more, might doubtless see with four if there were so many properly placed and disposed; or, if its habitation were all eye (window all round), might see all round. And so, in general, that which now can know many things by the impressions made at the ends of the nerves, or by the intervention of our present organs, and in this situation and inclosure can know them no other way, may for all that, when it comes to be loosed out of that prison,590 know them immediately, or by some other medium. That which is now forced to make shift with words and signs of things in its reasonings, may, when it shall be set at liberty and can come at them, reason upon the intuition of things themselves, or use a language more spiritual or ideal. I say, it is not impossible that this should be the case; and therefore no one can say, with reason, that it is not: especially, since we find by experience that the soul is limited, that the limitations are variable, that we know not enough of the nature of spirit to determine how these limitations are effected, and therefore cannot tell how far they may be carried on or taken off. This suffices to remove the force of the objection. But further,

A man when he wakes, or “comes to himself” (which phrase implies what I am going to say), immediately knows this, and knows himself to be the same soul that he was before his sleep or fainting away. I will suppose that he is also conscious to himself that in those intervals he thought not at all (which is the same the objector must suppose)⁠—that is, if his body had been cut to pieces or mouldered to dust, he could not have thought less⁠—for there is no thinking less than thinking not at all. From hence, then, I gather that the soul preserves a capacity of thinking, etc. under those circumstances and indispositions of the body in which it thinks no more than if the body was destroyed, and that therefore it may, and will, preserve it when the body is destroyed. And if so, what can this capacity be preserved for? Certainly not that it may never be exerted. The Author of nature does not use to act after that manner. So that here is this dilemma to be opposed to the objection: In sleep and swoonings the soul does either think, or not. If it does, the objection has no foundation; and if it does not, then all that will follow which I have just now said.

If we should suppose the soul to be a being by nature made to inform some body, and that it cannot exist and act in a state of total separation from all body, it would not follow from hence that what we call death must therefore reduce it to a state of absolute insensitivity and inactivity, which to it would be equal to nonexistence. For that body, which is so necessary to it, may be some fine vehicle that dwells with it in the brain (according to that hypothesis some paragraphs back) and goes off with it at death. Neither the answers to the objection, nor the case after death, will be much altered by such a supposition. And since I confess I see no absurdity in it, I will try to explain it a little further: We are sensible of many material impressions (impressions made upon us by material causes, or bodies); that there are such, we are sure. Therefore there must be some matter within us, which, being moved or pressed upon, the soul apprehends it immediately. And therefore, again, there must be some matter to which it is immediately and intimately united, and related in such a manner as it is not related to any other. Let us now suppose this said matter to be some refined and spirituous vehicle,591 which the soul does immediately inform, with which it sympathizes, by which it acts and is acted upon, and to which it is vitally and inseparably united; and that this animated vehicle has its abode in the brain, among the heads and beginnings of the nerves. Suppose we also, that when any impressions are made upon the organs or parts of the body, the effects of them are carried by the nerves up to their fountain, and the place where the soul in its