"David Hume - Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

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I. M/ETAPHYSICAL\ topics suppose that the soul is immaterial,
and that 'tis impossible {24} for thought to belong to a material
substance. -- ([editor's note] 1) But just metaphysics teach us that
the notion of substance is wholly confused and imperfect, and that
we have no other idea of any substance, than as an aggregate of
particular qualities, inhering in an unknown something. Matter,
therefore, and spirit, are at bottom equally unknown, and we cannot
determine what qualities inhere in the one or in the other.
([editor's note] 2) They likewise teach us that nothing can be
decided concerning any cause or effect, and that
experience being the only source of our judgements of this nature,
we cannot know from any other principle, whether matter, by its
structure or arrangement, may not be the cause of thought. Abstract
reasonings cannot decide any question of fact or existence. -- But
admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the
universe, like the etherial fire of the , and to be the only
inherent subject of thought, we have reason to conclude {25} from
that nature uses it after the manner she does the other
substance, . She employs it as a kind of paste or clay;
modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after
a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form.
As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies
of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their
minds: Their consciousness, or that system of thought which they
formed during life, may be continually dissolved by death. And
nothing interests them in the new modification. The most positive
asserters of the mortality of the soul, never denied the immortality
of its substance. And that an immaterial substance, as well as a
material, may lose its memory or consciousness, appears in part from
experience, if the soul be immaterial. -- Reasoning from the common
course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the
supreme cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy,
{26} what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The Soul
therefore if immortal, existed before our birth; and if the former
existence no ways concerned us, neither will the latter. -- Animals
undoubtedly feel, think, love, hate, will, and even reason, tho' in
a more imperfect manner than men; are their souls also immaterial
and immortal? ([editor's note] 3)



II. L/ET\ us now consider the moral arguments, chiefly those
derived from the justice of God, which is supposed to be farther
interested in the farther punishment of the vicious and reward of
the virtuous. -- But these arguments are grounded on the supposition
that God has attributes beyond what he has exerted in this universe,