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parts is out of the question , in no otber way can a purely simple nature cease to exist , and a power to think must either actually think or cease to be . " In a subsequent part of the treatise the author states his reasons for the opinion , that the soul can neither feel nor think unless united with a portion of organized matter , an opinion in which , he says , most philosophers will agree with him . He might have added the higher authority of its accordance with the scripture doctrine of the resurrection of the body .
" But where do we find annihilation in all nature ? What particle in the universe is lost ? What original power is ever for a moment inert ? The compound is dissolved ; one body is moved by another ; the direction of one force is changed by another ; here there is a composition , there a resolution of forces , but extinction is not in nature . The physical forces of all bodies
united cannot annihilate a sun-moat , cannot suspend the motive power of a single atom . They may act upon it , but not without suffering a change themselves . How small soever this change may be , it proves the existence of the reacting power , and shews the effect of a force which all nature cannot overcome . "
When D'Alembert asks , how we can conceive two substances which have no common property to act upon one another , Mendelssohn replies by another question , Can we conceive better how matter acts upon matter ? Is mutual action explained at all by the similitude of substances ? When D'Alembert asks , what difference we can imagine , according to our custom of thinking , between absolute nothing , and a nature which is not matter , our German Metaphysician replies , " M . D'Alembert defines matter , that which is extended and impenetrable : both extension and impenetrability are ideas which have , strictly speaking , their seat in the soul ; but we ascribe the exciting causes of them to an external object , and this object we name matter : the subject in which the ideas exist we name the soul : with what reason do we affirm the subject must have , of necessity , the property of the object ? Matter is at last ( it is all we know of it ) a nature that can excite in the soul the ideas of extension and impenetrability . Custom , we are told , says that the soul is nothing , if it is not material : that is , reason replies , a nature which has the ideas of extension and
impenetrability is nothing if it cannot also excite them . With what reason can this be maintained ? Between existence and non-existence there is a gulf which nature cannot pass : it can no more reduce into nothing , than create out of nothing . Here I ask not more for the soul than is conceded to me for every atom of steam ; not more for the power to think , than is admitted in every simple power of motion . Were it the power of a compound being , the aggregate force might be resolved into its elements ; but since it is not composed of elements , it cannot be destroyed in this way ; and it is impossible for all the powers of nature to effect its total annihilation /' J . M .
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( Continued from Vol . IV . p . 768 . ) Before proceeding in the course which we have prescribed to ourselves , it seems desirable to give our readers a view of the contents of Mr . GreswelPs volumes ; partly to enable them to judge whether the " Dissertations
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34 On the Chronology and Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives .
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ON THB CHRONOLOGY AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE GOSPFJL , NARRATIVES .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1831, page 34, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2593/page/34/
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