Part 17
The learned Mr. Henry Dodwell as he is usually called, and who is a pregnant instance that learning does not always persuade good sense to inhabit the same abode, took great pains to shew that the soul was naturally mortal, but might be immortalized by those who had the gift of conferring on it this precious attribute. This power he ascribed to the Bishops. Dodwell, though he would not at first join the establishment, changed his opinion and his conduct in this respect afterward. Bishop Sherlock denied that the existence of the soul could be made evident from the light of nature. (Disc. 2 p. 86. disc. 3 p. 114) Of the same opinion was Dr. Law who quotes him. Archbishop Tillotson declares (v. 12 serm. 2.) that he cannot find the doctrine of the immortality of the soul expressly delivered in scripture. Dr. Warburton wrote his “Divine legation” to prove that Moses and the Jews neither believed in, nor knew of a future state. Dr. Law, afterward Bishop of Carlisle, in the appendix to the third edition of his “Considerations on the theory of religion,” compleatly overthrows the whole doctrine of a separate soul as founded on the scripture, by a critical examination of every text usually adduced in its support. Dr. Watson the present Bishop of Landaff in the preface to his collection of theological tracts dedicated to young divines for whose use it was compiled, expressly declares that the question respecting the materiality or immateriality of the human soul, ranks among those subjects on which the _academicorum_ εποχη may be admitted, without injuring the foundations of religion. It should seem therefore, that it is not heterodoxy in mere speculative points of theology, that constitutes the sin against the holy Ghost with an established clergy, but heterodoxy on the subject of church authority and the grand alliance. It is in this spirit that the then Archdeacon of St. Albans, Dr. Horsely complains of Dr. Priestley’s history of the corruptions of christianity. “You will easily conjecture (says the Archdeacon in his animadversions on that work p. 5) what has led me to these reflections, is the extraordinary attempt which has lately been made to _unsettle the faith and break up the constitution of every ecclesiastical establishment in Christendom_. Such is the avowed object of a recent publication which bears the title of a history of the corruptions of christianity, among which the catholic doctrine of the trinity holds a principal place.”
This is an unfortunate exposure of the cloven foot of Hierarchy. It was not the wish to detect error or to establish truth--it was not from anxiety to fix upon a firm footing, some great and leading principle of christianity--it was not the benevolent design of communicating useful information on a litigated topic of speculative theology--it was not the meek and gentle spirit of sincere and patient enquiry that dictated those animadversions--all these motives would not only have borne with patience, but would have welcomed and exulted in a temperate discussion of unsettled opinions, before the tribunal of the public; for by such discussions alone, can the cause of truth be permanently and essentially promoted. No: these were not the motives that influenced the Archdeacon of St. Albans. It was the nefarious and unpardonable attempt to unsettle the faith of established creeds; however founded that faith might be, on ignorance or prejudice, on pardonable misapprehension, or culpable misrepresentation, on fallacy, on falsehood, or on fraud. These “Animadversions,” proceeded from the morbid irritability of an expectant ecclesiastic; from a prudent and a prescient indulgence of the _esprit de corps_; from a dread too perhaps, lest the tottering structure of church establishment, with all its envied accompaniments of sees and benefices, of deaconries and archdeaconries, and canonries, and prebendaries, and all the pomp and pride of artificial rank, and all the pleasures of temporal authority, and lucrative sinecure connected with it, might be too rudely shaken by sectarian attacks. But enough for the present, respecting these learned labours of the Archdeacon of St. Albans; which like those of Archdeacon Travis may well be considered as having sufficiently answered the _main_ purpose of their respective authors, in spite of the wicked replies of Priestley and Porson. Let us say with the public, _requiescant in pace_.
To return however to the more immediate subject of the present section. Hobbes seems to have been the first writer of repute (in England at least) who denied the doctrine of an immaterial and naturally immortal soul. This was a necessary consequence of his faith being apparently confined to corporeal existence, an opinion deducible in fact from the old maxim of the antients and of the schools, _nil unquam fuit in Intellectu, quod non prius erat in Sensu_. Hobbes’s Leviathan was published about 1650 or 1651. Spinosa who published after Hobbes was rather an Atheist than a Materialist, a character to which though Hobbes’s opinions might lead, he does not assume. In 1678 Blount sent forward to the public his “_Anima Mundi_”, or an historical narration of the “opinions of the antients concerning man’s soul after this life according to unenlightened nature,” which met with much opposition and some persecution; as was likely, for it is by no means destitute of merit.
In 1702 appeared a book entitled “second thoughts concerning the human soul, demonstrating the notion of a human soul as believed to be a spiritual and immortal substance united to a human, to be an invention of the heathens and not consonant to the principles of philosophy, reason, or religion by E. P. or Estibius Philalethes.” The year following a supplement was published entitled “Farther Thoughts, &c.” The author, Dr. Coward, preoccupies a path subsequently taken by Dr. Law and Dr. Priestley, and endeavours to shew at length that the notion of an immaterial, immortal soul, is not countenanced by the texts of scripture usually adduced in favour of that opinion. These texts he criticises individually with a reference to the original words used. The author appears in the character of a sincere Christian. A second edition of this book was published 1704. In 1706 Mr. Dodwell before mentioned, a learned and laborious but weak man, and bigotted to the hierarchy, published his “Epistolary discourse proving from the scriptures and the first fathers that the soul is a principle naturally mortal, but immortalized actually by the pleasure of God, to punishment or reward; by its union with the divine baptismal spirit. Wherein is proved that none have the power of giving this divine immortalizing spirit since the apostles, but only the bishops.” This gave rise to the controversy between Clarke and Collins on the immortality of the soul. Dodwell’s book was attacked by Chishull, Norris and Clarke. He replied in three several publications, 1st. “A preliminary defence of the epistolary discourse concerning the distinction between soul and spirit, 1707. 2nd. The scripture account of the eternal rewards or punishments of all that hear of the gospel, without an immortality necessarily resulting from the nature of souls themselves that are concerned in those rewards and punishments, 1703. 3d. The natural mortality of human souls clearly demonstrated from the holy scriptures and the concurrent testimonies of the primitive writers.” 1708.
About this time Toland in his letters to Serena, (1704) gives an “Essay on the history of the soul’s immortality among the Heathens,” deducing that doctrine from popular traditions supported by poetical fictions, and at length adopted and defended among the philosophers. Concluding from hence, (preface) that divine authority was the surest anchor of our hope and the best if not the only demonstration of the soul’s immortality; an indirect denial of the whole doctrine as coming from Toland, who was certainly no friend to christianity and no believer in the divine authority of the scriptures.
In the same year (1704) but somewhat previous to Toland, Dr. Coward had published his “Grand Essay, or a vindication of reason and religion against impostures of philosophy; proving according to those ideas and conceptions of things human understanding is capable of forming itself. 1st. That the existence of an immaterial substance is a philosophic imposture and impossible to be conceived. 2ndly That all matter has originally created in it, a principle of internal or self motion. 3rdly That matter and motion must be the foundation of thought in men and brutes.” Dodwell and Toland had learning enough and so had Blount to throw some light on the history of this question, and the author of second thoughts has many observations well adapted to the question he discusses, but very little is to be gained from a perusal of Coward’s book.
Dr. Hartley’s great work, (great, not from the bulk, but the importance of it) was first published in 1749. The direct and manifest tendency of the whole of his first volume is to destroy the common hypothesis of an immaterial soul: and this he does with a mass of fact and a force of reasoning irresistible. He shews clearly how all the faculties ascribed to the soul, thought, reflection, judgement, memory, and all the passions selfish and benevolent, may be resolved into one simple undeniable law of animal organization, without the necessity of any hypothesis such as that of a separate soul. Yet he does not appear distinctly to have seen the full weight and tendency of his own reasoning, and he adopts a theory on the subject, loaded with more difficulties and absurdities, than even the common hypothesis.
In 1757 was published a philosophical and scriptural inquiry into the nature and constitution “of mankind considered only as rational beings, wherein the antient opinion asserting the human soul to be an immaterial, immortal and thinking substance is found to be quite false and erroneous, and the true nature state and manner of existence of the power of thinking in mankind is evidently demonstrated by reason and the sacred scriptures.” Author J. R. M. I. Who this author really was I know not. But from the perusal of his book it is probable that he was a physician, and had been travelling. The above work he terms the philosophic or first part, and refers to a longer work of his own in manuscript which it seems he could not procure to be published. There is very little new in the book so far as I could judge.
I do not recollect any other treatise relating to the subject that excited public attention in England. In France and Holland La Mettrie began the controversy by his Histoire naturelle de L’Ame, published at the Hague in 1745 as a translation from the English of Mr. Charp;[66] it is a book containing many forcible remarks, and did credit to the side of the question which La Mettrie had adopted. Soon after this La Mettrie published L’Homme machine which was burnt in Holland in 1748. This was an honour not due to the formidable character of the work itself, which though it contains some of the common arguments drawn from the physiology and pathology of the human system, is by no means of first rate merit. He whimsically attributes the fierceness of the English, to their eating their meat more raw than other nations. This book was translated and published in London in 1750.
[66] This is probably one of the innumerable instances of the carelessness of French authors in quoting English names. La Mettrie most likely meant to ascribe this to Mr. Sharp the Surgeon, with whose reputation he must have been acquainted. I remember Arthur Young Esq. in one of his annals of agriculture complains that a paper of his translated into French was given to Artor Jionge ecuier. Some years ago Mr. Charles Taylor of Manchester (lately secretary to the society of Arts in London) was requested by Lord Hawkesbury to make some experiments to ascertain the value of East India Indigo when compared with the Spanish. Mr. Taylor did ascertain that the former yielded more colour for the same money at the current prices than the latter by above one fourth. In a paper I believe by M. D’Ijonval these experiments are quoted in a note as made by Le Chevalier Charles Tadkos celebre manufacturier de Manchester.
From Mr. Hallet’s discoveries the last volume of which was published in 1736 Dr. Priestley has extracted for himself and quoted what he deemed necessary on this question. I do not notice as part of the history of the question Materialism in England, the foreign atheistical publications, such as _Le Systeme de la nature_ attributed to Mirabeau the father, _Le vrai sens du Systeme de l’univers_ a posthumous work ascribed to Helvetius, _Le Bon Sens_ by Meslier, and others whose titles do not now occur to me, because until within these few years, they were hardly known in England, and excited no discussion of the subject there, previous to the work of Dr. Priestley now under consideration.
The Doctor himself says in his preface to the disquisitions on matter and spirit, first published in 1777, that though he had entertained occasional doubts on the intimate union of two substances, so entirely heterogeneous as the Soul and the Body, the objections to the common hypothesis, did not impressively occur to him, until the publication of his treatise against the Scotch Doctors, which was in 1774. Those doubts indeed could hardly avoid occurring to any person who had carefully perused Hartley’s Essay on Man, first published in 1749, and Dr. Law’s appendix before mentioned in 1755.
Dr. Hartley has shewn with a weight of fact and argument amounting to demonstration, that all the phenomena of mind, may be accounted for from the known properties and laws of animal organization; and notwithstanding, that for some reason or other he has so far accommodated his work to vulgar prejudice, as to adopt the theory of a separate Soul, though in a very objectionable form, it is evidently a clog upon his system, and unnecessary to any part of his reasoning. Substitute PERCEPTION, and his theory is compleat. Nor indeed is it possible to reject this. Constant concomitance is the sole foundation on which we build out; inference of necessary connection: we have _no_ evidence of the latter, but the former. Perception manifestly arises from, and accompanies animal organization; the facts are of perpetual occurrence, and the proof from induction is compleat.
Hartley having laid a sufficient foundation to conclude (as Dr. Priestley has done) that the natural appearances of the human system might be fully explained by means of Perception and Association, without the redundant introduction of the common hypothesis, Dr. Law a few years afterward compleatly proved to the christian world that though Life and Immortality were brought to light by the christian dispensation, the common theory of a separate immaterial and immortal soul, was not necessary to, or countenanced by the christian doctrine. Dr. Law seems by his preface, to have been fearful of the consequences of expressing the whole of his opinion on this abstruse subject, and confines himself in his appendix to the examination of the passages of Scripture usually referred to in favour of the Soul’s immortality. This appendix I believe was first added to the _third_ edition of his Considerations on the Theory of Religion, published in 1755.
Against Dr. Priestley, any ground of popular obloquy would be eagerly laid hold of by the Bigots of the day. The doubts expressed in the examination of Drs. Reid, Oswald, and Beattie, excited so much obloquy, as to render it necessary for Dr. Priestley to review his opinions, and renounce or defend them. The result was, the disquisition on matter and spirit, the first volume containing a discussion of the question of materialism, the second that of liberty and necessity.
In discussing the former hypothesis, Dr. Priestley denies not only the existence of spirit as having no relation to extension or space, but also the common definition of matter, as a substance possessing only the inert properties of extension, and solidity or impenetrability. The latter he defines in conformity with the more accurate observations of later physics, a substance possessing the property of extension and the active powers of attraction and repulsion. With Boscovich and Mr. Michell, he admits of the penetrability of matter, and replies to the objections that may be drawn from this view of the subject.
It must be acknowledged that highly curious as this preliminary disquisition is, it is not only unnecessary to the main argument, but leaves the definition of matter open to the question whether there be any substratum or subject in which the essential properties or powers of attracting and repelling inhere. That these powers really belong to matter, whatever else matter may be, is evident from the reflection of light, previous to contact with the reflecting substance and its inflection afterward from the electric spark, visible along a suspended chain, from the phenomena of the metallic pyrometers, from the rain drop on a cabbage leaf, &c. And that matter is permeable, at least to light, is sufficiently evident from every case of tranparency. Still however it cannot consist of properties alone; a property must be the property of something. But the proper and direct train of argument in favour of materialism is, that every phenomenon from which the notion of a soul is deduced, is resolveable into some affection of the brain, perceived. That all thought, reflection, choice, judgment, memory, the passions and affections, &c. consist only of ideas or sensations,(i. e. motions within that organ) perceived at the time. Though, judgment, memory, being words, denoting different kinds of internal perceptions, relating only to, and consisting of, ideas and sensations.[67] That sensations and ideas themselves, arise only in consequence of the impressions of external objects on our senses, which impressions are liable to be recalled afterward by the recurrence of others with which they were originally associated, agreeably to the necessary and inevitable law of the animal system. That this is evident in as much as there can be no ideas peculiar to any of the senses where there is a want of the necessary bodily organ, as of hearing, sight, &c. inasmuch as all these ideas commence with the body, grow with its growth, and decrease with its decline. That they can be suspended, altered, destroyed, by artificial means, by accident, by disease. That all these properties of mind, viz. thought, judgment, memory, passions, and affections, are as evident in brutes as in men; and though the degree be different, it is always accompanied with a proportionate difference of organization. That perception is clearly the result of organization, being always found with it, and never without it: as clearly so in other animals as in the human species; and probably in vegetables though in a still lower degree.[68] That as all the common phenomena of mind, can be accounted for from the known facts of organized matter without the souls, and as none of them can possibly be attributed to the soul without the body, there is no necessity to recur to any gratuitous theory in addition to the visible corporeal frame. That the doctrine of the soul originated in ignorance, and has been supported by imposture; that it involves gross contradictions and insuperable difficulties, and is no more countenanced by true religion than by true philosophy.
[67] A _Sensation_ is an impression made by some external object on the Senses; the motion thus excited is propagated along the appropriate nerve, until it reaches the Sensory in the Brain, and it is there and there only, felt or _perceived_.
An _Idea_, is a motion in the Brain, excited there either by the laws of association to which that organ is subject, or by some accidental state of the system in general, or that organ in particular, without the intervention of an impression on the Senses ab extra as the cause of it. Such a motion being similar to a sensation formerly excited, and being also felt or perceived is the correspondent _Idea_.
[68] Dr. Percival, Dr. Bell in the Manchester Transactions, and Dr. Watson in the last volume of his essays, have made this opinion highly probable. Many additional observations are to be found in Dr. Darwin’s works. I consider it as a theory established.
All this has been shewn with great force of argument and ingenuity by Dr. Priestley in these disquisitions, to which it may safely be affirmed nothing like a satisfactory answer has yet been given, or is ever likely to be given. True metaphysics, like every other branch of philosophy can only be founded on an accurate observation of facts, and as these become gradually substituted for mere names, our real knowledge will improve. It is to physiology perhaps that the question of the materiality of the human soul, and even that of liberty and necessity will owe the compleatest elucidation. Until medical writers brought into view the _facts_ relating to animal life, the metaphysical disquisitions on these subjects were involved in an endless confusion of words without precise meaning, and almost always including in their definition a _petitio principii_. Indeed we are not yet fully apprized either in Law, Physic or Divinity any more than in Metaphysics, that the _species intelligibiles_ of the old schoolmen, and the whole class of abstract ideas of the new schoolmen with Locke at their head, are not things, but names. They are not even either sensations or ideas; they are words, convenient indeed for classification, and used artificially like the signs of Algebra, but they have no archetype. This is a subject which will probably be better understood ere long by the labours of Mr. Horne Tooke.
Dr. Priestley therefore considered the question of a future state, as now rested on the basis which to a christian is or ought to be perfectly satisfactory; on the promises and declarations of our Saviour, exemplified by his own resurrection from the dead. Indeed the circumstances of the whole question of futurity depending on the truth of the christian scriptures and on them alone, is calculated to give them a peculiar and inestimable value in the eyes of those who look forward with anxious hope[69] to a continued and more perfect state of existence after death. Nor is it of any consequence to the christian, that the manner how this will be effected is not plainly revealed; for it is sufficient that the Being who first gave animation to the human frame, will at his own time and in his own manner for the wisest and best of purposes, again exert the same act of almighty power in favour of the human race, and in fulfillment of his promise through Jesus Christ. Such at least was the view of the subject habitually entertained by our author.
[69] There are some persons who do not seem to entertain this anxious hope. Mr. Gray the poet seems an instance, from the following passage in his ode Barbaras Ædes aditure mecum (Letters V. 2 p. 44) though I do not recollect that the sentiment has been noticed before.
Oh ego felix, vice si (nec unquam Surgerem rursus) simili cadentem Parca me lenis sineret quieto Fallere Letho. Multa flagranti radiisque cincto Integris, ah quam nihil inviderem, Cum Dei ardentes medius quadrigas Sentit Olympus!
I wonder whether Gray ever perused the following lines written by his friend and Biographer the Revd: Mr. Mason.
‘Is this the _Bigot’s_ rant? Away ye vain!’ Your hopes your fears, in doubt, in dulness steep! Go sooth your souls in sickness, grief, or pain, With the sad solace of, _eternal sleep_. Yet know ye Sceptics, know, the Almighty mind Who breath’d on man a portion of his fire, Bad his free soul by earth nor time confin’d To heav’n, to immortality aspire. Nor shall the pile of hope his mercy rear’d, By vain philosophy be e’er destroy’d; Eternity! by all or wish’d or fear’d, Shall be by all, or suffer’d or enjoy’d.
_Mason._