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A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF A FALLACY IN LOCKE'S USE OF THE ARGUMENT AGAINST
THE POSSIBILITY OF MATTER THINKING ON GROUNDS OF ITS BEING INCONCEIVABLE
THAT IT SHOULD.

Lest it should be thought that I am doing injustice to the views of this
illustrious theist, I here quote his own words:--"We have the ideas of
matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any
mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the
contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether
omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power
to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a
thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not
much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He
pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should
superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know
not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the Almighty
has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being,
but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no
contradiction in it that the first eternal thinking being should, if he
pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together
as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought: though,
as I think, I have proved, lib. iv., ch. 10 and 14, &c., it is no less than
a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature
void of sense and thought) should be that eternal first-thinking being.
What certainty of knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such
as, _e.g._, pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves,
after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be
in an immaterial substance upon the motion of the parts of body? Body, as
far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body; and
motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce
nothing but motion: so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain,
or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond
our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For
since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way
conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He