Sleep suspends
many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle;
drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently
derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most
excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually
withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does
it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these
are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body
are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and
perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that
what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the
relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass,
of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases
to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard
to each other. Thus colour, and sound, and taste, and odour exist
only relatively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar
substance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of
living beings. Why should that substance be assumed to be something
essentially distinct from all others, and exempt from subjection
to those laws from which no other substance is exempt? It differs,
indeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and light, and
magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally
differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change and
to decay, and to conversion into other forms.
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