It is strange, if the soul has ideas
of its own that it derived not from sensation or reflection, (as it
must have, if it thought before it received any impressions from the
body,) that it should never, in its private thinking, (so private,
that the man himself perceives it not,) retain any of them the very
moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new
discoveries. Who can find it reason that the soul should, in its
retirement during sleep, have so many hours' thoughts, and yet never
light on any of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation or
reflection; or at least preserve the memory of none but such, which,
being occasioned from the body, must needs be less natural to a
spirit? It is strange the soul should never once in a man's whole life
recall over any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had
before it borrowed anything from the body; never bring into the waking
man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of the cask, and
manifestly derive their original from that union. If it always thinks,
and so had ideas before it was united, or before it received any
from the body, it is not to be supposed but that during sleep it
recollects its native ideas; and during that retirement from
communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by itself, the ideas
it is busied about should be, sometimes at least, those more natural
and congenial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or
its own operations about them: which, since the waking man never
remembers, we must from this hypothesis conclude either that the
soul remembers something that the man does not; or else that memory
belongs only to such ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's
operations about them.
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