g of it. Moreover, as we conceive the ideas that are in the
minds of other spirits by means of our own, which we suppose to be
resemblances of them; so we know other spirits by means of our own
soul--which in that sense is the image or idea of them; it having
a like respect to other spirits that blueness or heat by me perceived
has to those ideas perceived by another.

141. THE NATURAL IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL IS A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE
OF THE FOREGOING DOCTRINE.--It must not be supposed that they who
assert the natural immortality of the soul are of opinion that it
is absolutely incapable of annihilation even by the infinite power
of the Creator who first gave it being, but only that it is not
liable to be broken or dissolved by the ordinary laws of nature
or motion. They indeed who hold the soul of man to be only a thin
vital flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and
corruptible as the body; since there is nothing more easily dissipated
than such a being, which it is naturally impossible should survive
the ruin of the tabernacle wherein it is enclosed. And this notion
has been greedily embraced and cherished by the worst part of mankind,
as the most effectual antidote against all impressions of virtue
and religion. But it has been made evident that bodies, of what frame or
texture soever, are barely passive ideas in the mind, which is more
distant and heterogeneous from them than light is from darkness. We have
shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and it is
consequently incorruptible. Nothing can be plainer than that the motions,
changes, decays, and dissolutions which we hourly see befall natural
bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature) cannot
possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance; such a being
therefore is indissoluble by the force of nature; that is to say, "the
soul of man is naturally immortal."

142. After what has been said, it is, I suppose, plain that our souls are
not to be known in the same manner as senseless, inactive objects, or by
way of idea. Spirits and ideas are things so wholly different, that when
we say "they exist," "they are known," or the like, these words must not
be thought to signify anything common to both natures. There is nothing
alike or common in them: and to expect that by any multiplication or
enlargement of our faculties we may be enabled to know a spirit as we do
a triangle, seems as absurd as if we should