e,
will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they
condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the subtilist parts of
matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the first breath of wind
effaces; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are
altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as the thoughts
of a soul that perish in thinking; that, once out of sight, are gone for
ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature never makes
excellent things for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived
that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty as
the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency
of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly employed,
at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without
remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or
others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we
will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and
senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of and
so wholly thrown away.

16. On this Hypothesis, the Soul must have Ideas not derived from
Sensation or Reflection, of which there is no Appearance.

It is true, we have sometimes instances of perception whilst we are
asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts: but how extravagant and
incoherent for the most part they are; how little conformable to the
perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted
with dreams need not be told. This I would willingly be satisfied
in,--whether the soul, when it thinks thus apart, and as it were
separate from the body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with
it, or no. If its separate thoughts be less rational, then these men
must say, that the soul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the
body: if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams should be, for the
most part, so frivolous and irrational; and that the soul should retain
none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations.

17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it.

Those who so confidently tell us that the soul always actually thinks, I
would they would also tell us, what those ideas are that are in the soul
of a child, before or just at the union with the body, before it hath
received any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it,
all ma