Allen, Ethan, 1738-1789. An essay on the universal plenitude of being and on the nature and immortality of the human soul and its agency : manuscript, [1784]. MS Am 1825. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

This appendix to be Published at a future day when it will not inpinge on my fortune or present living Witness ----- Ethan Allen

The property of U. H. Penniman Colchester {Vermont}

Furthermore it is no wise probable that (those) other Intelligent beings beings whose mode of sensation are premised to be different from ours

James Gayer

An essay on the universal plenitude of Being, and on the nature and immor -tality of the human Soul, and its ageing by Ethan Allen, {Esquire}

Proposed as an appendix to a system of moral philosophy, lately published at Bennington, entitled oracles of Reason. To which is subjoined, a letter to Doctor {Benjamin} Gale in answer to one of his, on the subject of eternal Creation.

Introduction

The volum of to which this is an appendix, was written and printed, previous (to) the composing of this addition, because (in which) I have altered my opinion, of the essence of the Soul. In page 94 of the said volume I considered the Soul, as not capable of possessing or occupying Space, in which opinion, (with many others) for the reasons hereafter exhibited, I conclude that I was mistaken. The Soul, with entity in general, must needs occupy Space in some sense illegible or other. Though it the Soul is intrinsically different from senseless matter (which, in the course of the arguments, will be evinced) yet the Soul (with other intelligent entity) it must have a place, in order to have an existence; and if a place, it must have substance, (however mysterious

to us) which is by nature capable of possessing (place) Since admitting the existence of the Soul (of which we have an intuitive consciousness) it must exist some where, which is the same as to exist in some place, for an existence no where, is a contradiction to existence it self.

We must therefore ascribe substance to the nature of the Soul, a property by which only (it) is capable of place, or whereness, and consequently of existence; for otherwise, we only amuse ourselves with the empty notions of nonentity (for the Soul), which is the same as for an intelligent conscious being, in actual possession of place and existence, to imagine that he is nothing; which, if true, we query how he ever came to imagine anything about entity or nonentity, or to have exercised any reflection or consciousness at all; since nothing, or the mere absence of being, could not have done it. I suppose that writers and speakers have confounded themselves more or less, in their arguments on this subject, by denominating the Soul, to be (either) material or immaterial, and by examining the proportion of incogitative and s(t)upid matter, which is illegible capable of division, figure and motion, with the effects and combinations, which, to our senses and conceptions, appear to be (in) those kinds of beings; and finding that there is none of the properties or affections that are natural to an intelligent Soul, except the property of possessing place, which is co(m)mon (to) senseless as well as to moral beings, we are apt to run into the absurd conclusion