Letters on England [24]
than myself, the examining whether the soul exists before or after
the organisation of our bodies. But I confess that it is my lot to
be animated with one of those heavy souls which do not think always;
and I am even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more
necessary the soul should think perpetually than that bodies should
be for ever in motion."
With regard to myself, I shall boast that I have the honour to be as
stupid in this particular as Mr. Locke. No one shall ever make me
believe that I think always: and I am as little inclined as he
could be to fancy that some weeks after I was conceived I was a very
learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot
at my birth; and possessing when in the womb (though to no manner of
purpose) knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it;
and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly.
Mr. Locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having fully
renounced the vanity of believing that we think always; after having
laid down, from the most solid principles, that ideas enter the mind
through the senses; having examined our simple and complex ideas;
having traced the human mind through its several operations; having
shown that all the languages in the world are imperfect, and the
great abuse that is made of words every moment, he at last comes to
consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge.
It was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very modestly,
the following words: "We shall, perhaps, never be capable of
knowing whether a being, purely material, thinks or not." This sage
assertion was, by more divines than one, looked upon as a scandalous
declaration that the soul is material and mortal. Some Englishmen,
devout after their way, sounded an alarm. The superstitious are the
same in society as cowards in an army; they themselves are seized
with a panic fear, and communicate it to others. It was loudly
exclaimed that Mr. Locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless,
religion had nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely
philosophical, altogether independent of faith and revelation. Mr.
Locke's opponents needed but to examine, calmly and impartially,
whether the declaring that matter can think, implies a
contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate thought to
matter. But divines are too apt to begin their declarations with
saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion;
in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare
publicly that Boileau spake irreverently of Louis XIV., because he
ridiculed their stupid productions. Bishop Stillingfleet got the
reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine because he did not
expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke.
That divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he
argued as a schoolman, and Locke as a philosopher, who was perfectly
acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side of the human
mind, and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew. If I might
presume to give my opinion on so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke,
I would say, that men have long disputed on the nature and the
immortality of the soul. With regard to its immortality, it is
impossible to give a demonstration of it, since its nature is still
the subject of controversy; which, however, must be thoroughly
understood before a person can be able to determine whether it be
immortal or not. Human reason is so little able, merely by its own
strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was
absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of
advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the
soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is
required, and the matter is cleared up at once. But it is otherwise
with respect to its nature;