* * * * *

“Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind:  it is in perpetual activity.  I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better.  It acts also so very independent of body—­in dreams, for instance;—­incoherently and madly, I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake.  Now that this should not act separately, as well as jointly, who can pronounce?  The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state ’a soul which drags a carcass,’—­a heavy chain, to be sure, but all chains being material may be shaken off.  How far our future life will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so.  Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other.  A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong; and when the world is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?  Human passions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here;—­but the whole thing is inscrutable.

* * * * *

“It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that!  I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

* * * * *

“Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind.  But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms.

* * * * *

“Matter is eternal, always changing, but reproduced, and, as far as we can comprehend eternity, eternal; and why not mind?  Why should not the mind act with and upon the universe, as portions of it act upon, and with, the congregated dust called mankind?  See how one man acts upon himself and others, or upon multitudes!  The same agency, in a higher and purer degree, may act upon the stars, &c. ad infinitum.

* * * * *

“I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded upon the soul.  For this reason Priestley’s Christian Materialism always struck me as deadly.  Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a soul.  The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul, (as surely the mind, or whatever you call it, is,) in this world, we must part with it in the next, even for an immortal materiality!  I own my partiality for spirit.