ver, if my consciousness, because it is idea or spirit, endures for
ever.

George Berkeley, Anglican Bishop of Cloyne and brother in spirit to the
Anglican bishop Joseph Butler, was equally as anxious to save the belief
in the immortality of the soul. In the first words of the Preface to his
_Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, he tells us
that he considers that this treatise will be useful, "particularly to
those who are tainted with scepticism, or want a demonstration of the
existence and immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of the
soul." In paragraph cxl. he lays it down that we have an idea, or rather
a notion, of spirit, and that we know other spirits by means of our own,
from which follows--so in the next paragraph he roundly affirms--the
natural immortality of the soul. And here he enters upon a series of
confusions arising from the ambiguity with which he invests the term
notion. And after having established the immortality of the soul, almost
as it were _per saltum_, on the ground that the soul is not passive like
the body, he proceeds to tell us in paragraph cxlvii. that the existence
of God is more evident than that of man. And yet, in spite of this,
there are still some who are doubtful!

The question was complicated by making consciousness a property of the
soul, consciousness being something more than soul--that is to say, a
substantial form of the body, the originator of all the organic
functions of the body. The soul not only thinks, feels, and wills, but
moves the body and prompts its vital functions; in the human soul are
united the vegetative, animal, and rational functions. Such is the
theory. But the soul separated from the body can have neither
vegetative nor animal functions.

A theory, in short, which for the reason is a veritable contexture of
confusions.

After the Renaissance and the restoration of purely rational thought,
emancipated from all theology, the doctrine of the mortality of the soul
was re-established by the newly published writings of the second-century
philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias and by Pietro Pomponazzi and
others. And in point of fact, little or nothing can be added to what
Pomponazzi has written in his _Tractatus de immortalitate animae_. It is
reason itself, and it serves nothing to reiterate his arguments.

Attempts have not been wanting, however, to find an empirical support
for belief in the immortality of the soul, and among t