The Religion of Nature Delineated

to this doctrine of traduction (a supposition that the soul is merely material, or but the result of some disposition in matter) has been undertaken to be refuted hereafter. But I may premise this here: though we can have no image of a spirit (because no being can be portrayed, or represented by an image, but what is material), yet we may have reason to assert the existence of such a substance.231 Matter is a thing which we converse with, of which we know pretty well the nature and properties, and since we cannot find among them any that are cogitative, or such a thing as life, but several things inconsistent with them, we are under a necessity of confessing that there is some other species of substance beside that which is corporeal, and that our souls are of that kind (or rather of one of those kinds which are not merely corporeal, for there must be more than one), though we can draw no image of it in our own minds. Nor is it at all surprising that we should not be able to do this, for how can the mind be the object of itself?232 It may contemplate the body which it inhabits, may be conscious of its own acts, and reflect upon the ideas it finds⁠—but of its own substance it can have no adequate notion, unless it could be as it were object and spectator both. Only that perfect Being, whose knowledge is infinite, can thus intimately know himself.

They, who found the traduction of the soul upon this presumption, that it is material, and attends the body as some part or affection of it, seem further to be most woefully mistaken upon this account: because the body itself is not propagated by traduction. It passes indeed through the bodies of the parents, who afford a transitory habitation and subsistence to it; but it cannot be formed by the parents, or grow out of any part of them. For all the vital and essential parts of it must be one coeval system, and formed at once in the first article of the nascent animalculum; since no one of these could be nourished, or ever come to anything, without the rest: on the contrary, if any one of them could prevent and be before the rest, it would soon wither and decay again for lack of nourishment received by proper vessels, as we see the limbs and organs of animals do when the supply due from the animal economy is any way intercepted or obstructed. And since an organized body, which requires to be thus simultaneously made (fashioned, as it were, at one stroke) cannot be the effect of any natural and gradual process, I cannot but conclude that there were animalcula of every tribe originally formed by the almighty Parent, to be the seed of all future generations of animals. Any other manner of production would be like that which is usually called equivocal or spontaneous generation, and with great reason now generally exploded. And it is certain that the analogy of nature in other instances, and microscopical observations, do abet what I have said strongly.

Lastly, if there is no race of men that has been from eternity, there is no man who is not descended from two first parents: and then the souls of those two first parents could be traduced from no other. And that there is no such race (none that has been upon this earth from eternity), is apparent from the face of earthly things, and the history of mankind,233 arts, and sciences. What is objected against this argument from fancied inundations, conflagrations, etc.234 has no weight with me. Let us suppose some such great calamity to happen now. It must be either universal, or not. If universal, so that nobody at all could be saved, then either there must never be any more men, or they must begin again in some first parents. If it was only topical, affecting some one tract of the globe, or if the tops of mountains more eminent, or rocks more firm, remained unaffected, or if there were any natural means left by which men might escape, considerable numbers must certainly survive; and then it cannot be imagined that they should all be absolutely so ignorant of everything, that no one should be able to give an account of such things as were common; no one able to write, or read, or even to recollect that there were such things as letters; none that understood any trade; none that could tell what kind of habitations they had, how they used to be clothed, how their meat dressed, or even what their food was; nor can it be thought that all books, arms, manufactures of every kind, ships, buildings, and all the product of human skill and industry now extant in the world should be so universally and utterly abolished, that no part, no vestigium of them, should remain; not so much as to give a hint toward the speedy restoration of necessary arts at least. The people escaping must sure have clothes on, and many necessaries about them, without which they could not escape, nor outlive such a dreadful scene. In short, no conflagration, no flood, no destruction, can serve the objector’s purpose to reduce mankind to that state which, by ancient memoirs and many undeniable symptoms, we find them to have been in not many thousands of years since; I say, no destruction can serve his purpose, but such an one as makes thorough work, only sparing two or three couples, stripped of everything, and the most stupid and veriest blocks235 to be picked out of the whole number: natural fools, or mere homines sylvestres, would retain habits, and fall to their old way of living, as soon as they had the opportunity to do it. And suppose they