prove the unconsciousness of matter.

"It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that
every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid
of thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from
matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to
which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be
annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or
little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of
material existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If
matter be once without thought, it can only be made to think by some new
modification, but all the modifications which it can admit, are equally
unconnected with cogitative powers."

"But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge, that matter may have
qualities, with which we are unacquainted."

"He who will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which he knows,
because there may be something, which he knows not; he that can set
hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be
admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that
matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and, if this conviction cannot
be opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we have
all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that which is known
may be overruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can
arrive at certainty."

"Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too arrogantly limit the
creator's power."

"It is no limitation of omnipotence," replied the poet, "to suppose that
one thing is not consistent with another; that the same proposition
cannot be, at once, true and false; that the same number cannot be even
and odd; that cogitation cannot be conferred on that which is created
incapable of cogitation."

"I know not," said Nekayah, "any great use of this question. Does that
immateriality, which, in my opinion, you have sufficiently proved,
necessarily include eternal duration?"

"Of immateriality," said Imlac, "our ideas are negative, and, therefore,
obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual
duration, as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay:
whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and
separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no
parts, and, therefore, admits no solution, can b