continue as we experience it, in all respects, except those in which we have some reason to think it will be altered. This indeed is the kind of probability implied in the word continuance, which induces us to believe that the course of the world will continue to-morrow as it has done to-day; or that any one substance now existing will continue to exist a moment longer,—the Self-Existent Substance only excepted.

If therefore death does not destroy our faculties of perception and action, no other power can be imagined likely to do so, just at the instant of each creature's death; and hence would arise a probability of our living powers continuing after death, if death does not destroy them. Now there does not appear any reasonable ground of apprehension that this will be the case-if there be, it must arise either from the reason of the thing, or from the analogy of nature.

But we cannot argue this from the reason of the thing, because we know not what death is in itself, but only some of its effects, as the dissolution of skin, bones, &c.—which in nowise imply the destruction of a living agent. Besides, we are wholly ignorant upon what the exercise of our living powers depends; as we are also upon what the powers themselves depend. A sleep or swoon shows not only that these powers exist, when not exercised, but also that they exist when there is no present capacity of exercising them. Hence the

powers may exist, though the capacity of exercising them, or the actual exercise of them, be suspended.

As our living powers therefore may depend upon something entirely unconnected with death, no probability arises from the reason of the thing, that death will destroy them.

Neither does the analogy of nature afford this probability. We cannot indeed trace what becomes of animals, when death removes them from our view, and thus destroys the sensible proof we had of their possessing living powers; but we have not the slightest presumption that these powers are destroyed thereby. Indeed, the possession of them, up to the very moment we are capable of tracing them, creates a probability that they may still retain them: and this is corroborated by the changes we have experienced in ourselves-changes so great, that our existence in another state will be but analogous to what we have already undergone.

From various causes, however, we are possessed with early and lasting prejudices, that death will be our destruction, and it may be well to show how unfounded these prejudices are.

I. If death be the destruction of living beings, it can only be, on the supposition of their being compounded, and thus discerptible.

Now consciousness is a single indivisible power; and therefore the subject in which it resides would seem to be so too. If, for instance, the power of motion in any particle of nature were such, that it would be a contradiction to say one part might move whilst the other was at rest, then its power of motion would be indivisible, and so would the subject (or particle of matter) in which the power resides.

Since then our consciousness of our own existence is indivisible, so that it would be a contradiction to suppose one part of it here and another there, our power of consciousness is indivisible too: and by consequence, the subject in which it resides, viz. the conscious being, is one and indivisible also.

If then the living agent, MAN, is a single indivisible being, it follows that our bodies are no more ourselves, or part of ourselves, than any other matter around us: and hence that we may exist out of our bodies as well as in: or that we may hereafter animate the same, or new bodies, variously modified and organized; even as we do our present ones. And hence also that the dissolution of the bodies which we now have, or may hereafter have, cannot be the destruction of our living powers.

II. The absolute oneness of a living agent cannot indeed be proved by experiment. But the result of all observation tends to establish it. Men may lose their limbs, their organs of sense, even the greatest part of

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their bodies, and yet remain the same living agents. Their bodies are also vastly different in size and matter between infancy and maturity; and there is a perpetual change of particles going on in them: whilst at the same time each individual remains one and the same being. Hence we are taught to distinguish between ourselves, and the portions of matter which constitute our bodies. This general observation leads us to the following:

First. We have no way of determining by experience what is the certain bulk of the living being, MAN; and yet till it be determined that it is larger in bulk than the solid elementary particles of matter (which there is no ground to think any natural power can dissolve), there is no reason to think death to be the dissolution of the living being, even though it should not be absolutely indiscerptible.

Secondly. From our being nearly related to certain systems of matter, (flesh, bones, &c.) and afterwards ceasing to be so related, the living agents ourselves still remaining undestroyed, and these systems therefore not being ourselves; there is no ground to conclude any other systems (suppose internal ones) of matter to be ourselves; and therefore none to conclude, that what befals those systems at death will be the destruction of the living agents. We have already, several times over, lost a great part, and perhaps the whole of

our bodies, by gradual natural change, and we still remain the same living agents. Why may we not also remain the same, when we lose it by the summary natural process, death? The connection between a person and the parts, of his body, consists only in the living agent, and those parts, mutually affecting each other. And the same in kind, though not in degree, may be said of all foreign matter, furnishing us with ideas. Hence there is no ground for supposing that the dissolution of any matter is the destruction of the living agent, merely because of the interest he once had in it.

Thirdly. If we consider our bodies as made up of instruments of perception and motion, the same conclusion results. An eye is no more a percipient, in itself, than an optical instrument; it only prepares and conveys objects to the perceiving power; indeed, in dreams we have a latent power of perceiving objects, without our external organs of sense. If, then, we see with our eyes only in the same sense as we do with glasses, the like may be justly concluded from analogy of all our other organs of sense; they only convey impressions, as foreign instruments may do, without the slightest appearance that they themselves perceive.

So with regard to power of motion. The power remains even after a limb is lost, so as to move an artificial limb. Our limbs have no power of self-motion,