can, then we promise to proceed at once to give a categorical answer to the question just put. But if we cannot, then the prime condition of the question not being purified, the question itself has not been intelligibly asked; and therefore it cannot expect to receive a rational or intelligible answer. Should this be found to be the case, it will be obvious that we have been imposing upon ourselves, and have only mistakenly imagined ourselves to be asking a question which in truth we are not asking.
Can we, then, conceive ourselves removed or annihilated? is this thought a possible or conceivable supposition? Let us try it by the test of experience, by hypothetically answering the original question, in the first place, in the affirmative, and by saying that, although we conceive ourselves and all percipient beings annihilated, still the great universe of matter would maintain its place as firmly and as faithfully as before. We believe, then, that were there no eye actually present to behold them, the sky would be as bright, and the grass as green, as if they were gazed upon by ten million witnesses; that, though there were no ear present to hear them, the thunder would roar as loudly, and the sea sound as tempestuously as before; and that the firm-set earth, though now deserted by man, would remain as solid as when she resisted the pressure of all the generations of her children. But do we not see that, in holding this belief, we have violated, at the very outset, the essential conditions of our question?
