heard of till Kepler found it out about the middle of the last century.

117. Every part of the body being an inftrument of touch, we cannot pretend to enumerate the objects and organs of this fenfe. Heat and cold, hardness and foftnefs, hunger and thirst, the pain of wearinefs, and the pleasure of rest, and, in a word, all bodily fenfations, are referred to touch, except those of fmell, tafte, found, colour, and light.-In modern philosophy it has been made a question, whether distance, magnitude, and figure, be perceived by fight, by touch, or by both. The queftion belongs to Opticks; and the truth feems to be this: Distance, Magnitude, and Figure, are originally perceived, not by fight, but by touch; but we learn to judge of them from the informations of fight, by having obferved, that certain visible appearances do always accompany and fignify certain diftances, magnitudes, and figures.

SECT.

1

SECT. V.

Of Confcioufness or Reflection.

118. BY this faculty we attend to and perceive what paffes in our own

minds. It is peculiar to rational beings, for the brutes feem to have nothing of it. In exerting it, the mind makes no ufe of any bodily organ, so far as we know. It is true, that the body and mind do mutually operate on each other; that certain bodily diforders hurt the mind; and that certain energies of the mind affect the body. This proves them to be intimately connected; but this does not prove, that any one bodily part is neceffary to confcioufnefs in the fame manner as the eye, for example, is neceffary to feeing.

119. Of the things perceived by this faculty, the chief is the mind itself. Every man is confcious, that he has within him a thinking active principle called a foul or mind. And this belief feems to be uni

verfal;

verfal; so that if a man were to fay, that fo he was not confcious of any fuch thing, the world would fufpect him of either falsehood or infanity. Nay the general acknowledgement of the immortality of the foul, or of its existing after the diffolution of the body, (an opinion which in one form or other is found in all nations), proves, that it is natural for mankind to confider the human foul and body as fubftances fo distinct, that the former may live, and be happy or miserable, without the other.

120. Every man also believes, and holds himself to be abfolutely certain, that, whatever changes his body may undergo in this life, his foul always continues one and the fame. A temporary fufpenfion of all our faculties may happen in deep fleep, or in a fwoon; but we are certain, when we wake or recover, that we are the fame perfons we were before. In many things, 934 both natural, as vegetable and animal bodies; and artificial, as fhips and towns, the fubftance may be changed, and thing be fuppofed to continue the fame becaufe called by the fame name; fituated

yet

the

in the fame place; applied to the fame purpofe; or having its parts fo united, that, though new fubftance may have been added from time to time, or fome of the old taken away, there never was any change of the whole fubftance made at once. But the human foul is always the fame; its fubftance being incorporeal, as will be fhown hereafter, and confequently indivifible.

121. The things perceived by consciousnefs do as really exift, are as important, and may as well ferve for the materials of science, as external things and bodily qualities. What it is to think, to remember, to imagine, to be angry or forrowful, to believe or difbelieve, to approve or difapprove, we know by experience, as well as what it is to fee and hear. And truth and falfehood, virtue and vice, are as real as founds and colours, and much more effential to human happiness. Accordingly, in all cultivated languages, there are words to express memory, imagination, reason, confcience, true and falfe, juft and unjuft, right and wrong, &c.; which is a proof,

M

that

that in all nations, not utterly barbarous, fuch things are attended to, and spoken of, as matters of importance. So much for confcioufnefs in general. We are now to confider more particularly the feveral faculties comprehended in it. And firft of Memory.

122.

THIS

SECT. VI.

Of Memory.

HIS is that faculty, by which we acquire experience and knowledge; and without which we should at the end of the longest life be as ignorant as at its beginning. Memory prefents to us ideas or thoughts of what is past, accompanied with a perfuafion that they were formerly real and prefent. What we diftinctly remember to have feen we as firmly believe to have happened, as what is now present to our fenfes.

123. A found state of the brain is no doubt neceffary to the right exercise of both