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Untitled Article
declares his object is to produce a *< strong and satisfactory analogical argumentun favour of human resuscitation , from the indestruc * tibility of matter ; " but in his reply to my remarks , he reduces
his object to a u possibility of identity beingiprotected through a series of years , that may intervene between death and resuscitation , and hence the probability of a general resurrection . " dean
admit possible-to be more probable than impossible , and yet to many events in their nature possible , I attach no degree of probability . To such as reject the important truth of a future life , - from a supposed impossibility of
Continuing identity , his detail of occurrences in the natural world may produce conviction ; but nut being aware that a greater exertion of power is requisite to reproduce a being , than to give him existence at first , I am not one of these
objectors : my design is only directed Jtgainst the probability of such an event , from the instances he has adduced . Had it not been for the candid adttiission he has made in his reply , that his arguments weae not intended as
proofs of the justness of bis hypothesis , many other of your readers , as well as myself , might have misunderstood the tendency of the strong and satisfactory analogical argument , he undertook to furnish us with . The instance
of a vegetable nourished to maturity , by the various provisions supplied by the author of nature , and when his purpose has been effected , these supplies being returned in an unmixed state to the
general store , ready to effect similar benefit to succeeding vegetables , I consider as a fit one of
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the analogy Mr . Parkes endea . vours to trace . But our experience has never furnished as wi $ h a single instance where the whole plant , root , or seed has been destroyed by the putrefactive" pro - cess or otherwise , that hydrogen
or oxygen has reproduced it : their vivifying powers , if exerted with success , have uniforml y acted upon such roots or seeds as contain the fit ; and complete organization of thq future plant . When we examine the case of a
deceased human being , all whose intellectual faculties are probably but the result of organization , can any one discover the germ that remains undestroyed , ready
to snoot up into the future mass when exposed to the proper influence of those powers capable of such effect ? It has been conjectured by some writers , that the human frame contains certain
stamina incapable of discerptio % which , through the lapse of ages , will continue to preserve their identity ; but till some eviderice is brought forward in support of this hypothesis , J must consider
it to be more supported by the imagination than the judgment . It appears to me , therefore , Sir , particularly necessary , that Mr . Parkes , and those who adopt his opinions , should furnish us
with evidence upon this point , where alone the whole controversy hinges ; and if they ^ undertake to argue the probability of a future life to human beings , by the
revival of those subjects of the vege - table or mineral kingdoms , whose succession is provided for by the combination of properties that have been released from their former associates , with a remnant of the parent plant , to continue
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Uemarks on the Indestructibility of Matter * l £ 5
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1810, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2402/page/21/
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