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.
18. How knows any one that the Soul always thinks? For if it be not a
self-evident Proposition, it needs Proof.
I would be glad also to learn from these men who so confidently
pronounce that the human soul, or, which is all one, that a man always
thinks, how they come to know it; nay, how they come to know that they
themselves think, when they themselves do not perceive it. This, I am
afraid, is to be sure without proofs, and to know without perceiving.
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