Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/13



three years before his death I received from my friend Vane certain manuscripts with the somewhat fierce Envoy:—

From these papers I have selected and now edit the following piece, which embodies the ideas then supreme in his mind with relation to the question of the immortality of the human soul. He was at that time wont to declare that he believed in the soul's immortality as a Materialist believes in the immortality of matter: he believed that the universal soul subsists for ever, just as a Materialist believes that