This conclusion is nothing but a rigorous application of
Berkeley's reasoning concerning matter to mind, and it is fully adopted
by Kant.[35]
Having arrived at the conclusion that the conception of a soul, as a
substantive thing, is a mere figment of the imagination; and that,
whether it exists or not, we can by no possibility know anything about
it, the inquiry as to the durability of the soul may seem superfluous.
Nevertheless, there is still a sense in which, even under these
conditions, such an inquiry is justifiable. Leaving aside the problem of
the substance of the soul, and taking the word "soul" simply as a name
for the series of mental phenomena which make up an individual mind; it
remains open to us to ask, whether that series commenced with, or
before, the series of phenomena which constitute the corresponding
individual body; and whether it terminates with the end of the corporeal
series, or goes on after the existence of the body has ended. And, in
both cases, there arises the further question, whether the excess of
duration of the mental series over that of the body, is finite or
infinite.
Hume has discussed some of these questions in the remarkable essay _On
the Immortality of the Soul_, which was not published till after his
death, and which seems long to have remained but little known.
Nevertheless, indeed, possibly, for that reason, its influence has been
manifested in unexpected quarters, and its main arguments have been
adduced by archiepiscopal and episcopal authority in evidence of the
value of revelation.
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