Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the Greeks, can we discern their distinctions of νους, πνευμα, ψυχη, σωμα, of soul or spirit—of spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body; or of θυμος, ψυχη, and νους, ψυχη, and so forth?
This fine distinction may be reduced to one simple proposition:—that soul and mind are the same, under different combinations: mind is soul evinced through the medium of the brain; soul is mind emancipated from matter. This principle, if established, might associate the anomalies of many sophists; the existence of two minds, the sensitive and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philosophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his sermon before the Humane Society, the separation of the life of _intellect_ from _animal_ life; and it might reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical philosophy, with the pure but misdirected arguments of the theological critic.
We believe the spirit to be the essence of life and immortality; and it signifies not whether our words are those of Stahl—that it presided over the animal body; or those of Galen and Aristotle—that it directed the function of life. It is enough that we recognize the πνοη ξωης, or that _breath of life_, which the Creator breathed into none _but_ man; and the εικων θεου, the _image of God_, in which he was created. In this one proposition all the points of this awful question are comprehended. And it is on this _combined_ nature that we must reason, ere we discourse on _sleep_ and _dreams_.
CAST. I condole with you, Astrophel; you must forget the splendour of your dreams, and listen to their dull philosophy.
ASTR. We may indeed sympathize with each other, Castaly; we are threatened with another abstruse exposition of the mind, although we are already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest philosophers: the _cogitation_ or self-reasoning of Descartes, (the essence of whose “Principia” was “_Cogito, ergo sum_;” and it is an adoption of Milton’s Adam, “That I _am_, I know, because _I think_:” forgetting that the very _ego_ which thinks, is a proof of prior existence;) and of Malebranche, who believed they existed because they thought; the abstract _spiritualism_ of Berkley, who believed he existed merely because others thought of him; the _consciousness_ of Locke; the _idealism_ of Hume; the _material psychology_ of Paley; the _mental corporeality_ of Priestley; and the absolute _nonentity_ of Pyrrho.