15. Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts of a sleeping man ought to be most rational.
To think often, and never to
retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking, does
very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains
none; they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them; the looking-glass is never the better for
such ideas, nor the soul for such thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man the materials of the body
are employed, and made use of, in thinking; and that the memory of thoughts is retained by the impressions that
are made on the brain, and the traces there left after such thinking; but that in the thinking of the soul, which is not
perceived in a sleeping man, there the soul thinks apart, and making no use of the organs of the body, leaves no
impressions on it, and consequently no memory of such thoughts. Not to mention again the absurdity of two
distinct persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer, further,--That whatever ideas the mind can
receive and contemplate without the help of the body, it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of
the body too; or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by thinking. If it has no memory
of its own thoughts; if it cannot lay them up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon occasion; if it cannot
reflect upon what is past, and make use of its former experiences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what
purpose does it think? They who make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble
being than those do whom they condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the subtilist parts of matter. Characters
drawn on dust, that the first breath of wind effaces; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are
altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking; that, once out
of sight, are gone forever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature never makes excellent things
for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a
faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly
employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those
thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation, If
we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and senseless matter, any where in the
universe, made so little use of and so wholly thrown away.
