Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties, and beyond
that experience how vain is argument! cannot create, it can only
perceive. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a
word expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to
the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to
each other. If any one desires to know how unsatisfactorily the
popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they
need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts
develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that
the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.
[1815; publ. 1840]
ON A FUTURE STATE
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings
in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,--that
apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual
existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that
species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely,
the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living
being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest
particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have
clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have
distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names
of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of
division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its
elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual
and unchanged.
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