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20 placed it in an Existence that can never concern our Happiness or Misery as Men: The Princes of them having made it to subsist in the universal Soul of the World, from whence, say they, are struck out Scintillations to every thing that has Life; and in Death, what was Elementary, returned to its proper station, and what was Divine in us, to what is Divine in the Universe: a Metempsychosis or Transmigration continuing the World on in the order we see it.

When I ponder on the natural Cause of our Being ... On the Necessity of that Cause to produce us, and what the material Agent is ... On our gradual Advances and Decay; both in respect to Body and Soul ... The Soul’s sympathizing with the disorders of the Body ... Our Sleeps and total Forgetfulness ... Our Susceptibility of Madness or Idiocy, and hebridous Productions, especially that of Man with Beast; I am tempted to think this the most plausible of all Philosophical Opinions, in relation to our future Existence, that we are not Creatures of that consequence we imagine; our Natures neither deserving, nor should they expect in reason any other Immortality than what other Creatures enjoy in their Seed and Transmigration. This Doctrine is what the Eastern Sages, reverenced for their Wisdom, do still propagate, and teach the Heterodox a Lesson of Humility, That Pride was not made for Man: but at the same time