of the space the eye of the spectatour be posited the whole Image is still visible therein Now if this manner of total diffusion without fraction or division be competent to the visible species which is Corporeal as I have amply proved in my Physiology where I treated expresly of the nature of Vision certainly it must with more reason be competent to the Soul which is Incorporeal And as for what you observe of the gradual encroachment of Death and the sensible mortification of one limb after another beginning at the feet and other extremities of the body and creeping along to the heart the reason thereof is only this that the Vital Heat or Flame being almost either suffocated by putrefaction of the blood the only fewel by which it is maintained in Diseases or exhausted by old age goes out like a Lamp by degrees ceasing first to enliven or irradiate the parts that are most remote from the Focus or Heart and then failing in its conserving influence more and more untill at length suffering a total extinction in the very Heart as it were in the socket it leave that also cold and livelesse So that Death is an extinction only of the Vital Flame not of the Soul which as Solomon calls it is the brightnesse of the Everlasting Light the unspoited mirrour of the power of God and the Image of his Goodnesse and being but one she can do all things and remaining in her self she maketh all things new Lucretius There is another Argument of the Soul's Mortality drawn from hence that the Soul is as well a part of the Body as the Eye Ear or the other Sensitive Organs But these are no sooner separated from the whole than they become incapable of all Sense And therefore the Soul when once separate from the Body must likewise become destitute of Sense Athanasius The Mind or Soul cannot without great impropriety be said to be a part of the Body as the Eyes and Ears and other Organs of Sense are insomuch as these belong to the Integrality of the Body and the Soul belongs to the Integrality of the Totum Compositum and is the Essence or Form of Man And the Soul indeed is in them all and in all the rest of the Body but none of them is in the Soul So that for this reason alone you ought not to conceive a parity betwixt the Soul and the Instruments of sense as to their incapacity of Sensation after their division from the body being the Soul is the very Principle of Sense and the Organs can have no Sensation without Her But not to insist upon this I deny the Soul to be a part as the instruments of sense are because otherwise than those all are she is Incorporeal and is to her self and hath both in her self and from her self the principle of all her actions and energy which none of those can pretend to For she doth not borrow or derive from any other principle her power of Understanding or Reasoning as the eye doth its Faculty of seeing the Ear its faculty of Hearing but hath it immediately and solely from her self and therefore it is no wonder if the Eye or Ear once disjoyned from the body can see nor hear no longer c. but the Soul when separated from the body can understand and Reason of and within her self Lucretius But pray Sir reflect a little upon this that the Soul and Body are mutually connected and as it were United by so neer a relation or Necessitude as that look how the body being once destitute of the soul can no longer performe any vital Action so neither can the soul when once departed from the body and mixt with the Aer performe any action vital or Animal unless you please to give yourself the liberty of imagining that she doth then animate that part of Aer in which she doth take up her new lodging and of that forme herself instruments fit for the execution of her faculties Athanasius However the Conjunction of the Soul and body be very intimate and the most part of vital and Animal actions belong to the Totum Compositum or whole Composition yet from thence it doth not follow that though the body be incapable of any of those actions without the Soul therefore the in capacity is reciprocall and the soul can doe no actions without the body because the soul is the Principle of life and activity to the body but not the contrary When we behold a souldier fighting with a sword or other weapon we cannot justly say that when he is deprived of those weapons he can no longer strike a blow because though his weapons be gone he hath still his armes and hands wherewith he can strike when and as often as he pleaseth So when the Soul is every way provided of Members and Organs as it were with a Panoplie or complete armour and therewith performs several actions vital and Animal we cannot say that if once it devest itself of that armour and become naked it can no longer exercise its proper functions of Intellection and Ratiocination because though the instruments by the mediation whereof she doth commonly understand and reason in the body be taken away yet still she retains her Faculties Nor will it be therefore necessary that when the soul is departed from the body and breathed forth into the Aer as you with the vulgar seem to conceive that aer should be thereby Animated because it is essential to it then to act i. e. to understand and reason without the mediation of any organs at all and neither in the aer nor any other body whatever can the soul either meet with or create those dispositions that are requisite to vital information This Comparison I have here made betwixt the Soul and a Souldier is I confess incongruous as to the point of Information yet it holds with conveniency enough as to the point of Operation and your question doth chiefly concerne that the weapons of the souldier are as much dead and useless instruments without the hands that are to manage them as the members of the body are without the Soul and as these are Animated by the soul so are those in a manner Animated by the hands of the Souldier And this may be extended also to the solution of that so famous an Objection of Aristotle 1. de Anim. 8. where he saith Esse quidem Animam separabilem si aliquam functionem habeat quam sine corpore exerceat v. c. Intellectionem quae est ipsius maxime propria si modo ea quaepiam Imaginatio non sit aut sine Imaginatione fiat necesse autem est eum qui speculatur speculari simul aliquod phantasma Ergo c. The soul is to be accounted separable if it hath any function which it can exercise without the body namely Intellection provided that be not a certain kind of Imagination or can be performed without Imagination but experience testifieth that no man can
cast her slough or a stagg his old horns Athanasius To this I prepared a Solution when I proved the Appetite of Immortality to be Natural to the Soul however this present life cause in us a love of it self above that we ought to have of our future state just as the Appetite or love of Health doth not cease to be Natural however the blandishments of Sense and flattering baits of some present pleasure that impugnes health may create in us a stronger desire for the time and therefore you might have well omitted here to argue the Mortality of the Soul from its reluctancy against death and unwillingnesse to leave its old companion the body However without insisting upon this that many men even in this life long used to a mean and turbulent state or condition become so depraved and abject in their judgement and affection as to refuse to change it for a better if they might To what I have said formerly of the Universal desire of Immortality I shall annex this one both pertinent and memorable consideration out of Cicero in Catone majore Quid quod sapientissimus quisque aequissimo animo moritur stultissimus iniquissimo Nonne nobis videtur Animus is qui plus cernat longiùs videre se ad meliora proficisci ille autem cujus obtusior sit acies non videre Equidem efferor studio patres vestros quos colui dilexi videndi Neque verò eos solùm convenire aveo sed illos etiam de quibus audivi legi ipse conscripsi Quò quidem me proficisceutem haud scio quis facile retraxerit tanquam Peliam recoxerit Quod si quis Deus mihi largiatur ut ex hac aetate repuerascam in cunis vagiam valde recusem nec verò velim quasi decurso spatio à calce ad carceres revocari Doth not every wise man die with extream content and serenity of mind and only Fools with disquiet impatience and reluctancy Is not that mind to be accounted the most clear sighted which seeth things afar off and discerns that it is to be translated into a better state and that dim and weak which doth not look beyond things present and discern nothing of its future condition For my part truly I am even transported with vehement longing to behold again the faces of those brave men your Fathers whom in their lives I so much loved and honored And not only them but some other worthy persons also whose fame I have heard and read of and celebrated in my own writings And if I were so happy once as to be on my journey toward those Heroes I know none that should easily draw me back again or retard my speed by restoring my youth like Pelias If any of the Gods should think to do me a favour in making me young again now after I have attained to this my declining age I profess I would refuse the proffer nor would I having run over the stage of life be brought back again to the post from which I first set forth Hereunto I might add also that patheticall Exclamation of that Emperour of wisedom Marcus Antoninus Ecquando futura es O Anima bona simplex una nuda corpore te ambiente dilucidior Ecquando dispositionem dilectioni et affectui genuino deditam degustabis Ecquando futura es plena rei nullius indiga nihil desiderans ulterius nihil expetens c. As if He were angry and passionately expostulating with his soul that she staid so long in the indigent and vexatious condition of this life and had omitted opportunities of translating herself into a better in which she would be intirely Herself and injoy those pleasures that are more genuine and agreeable to her immortal nature But so clear a truth as this of the Souls desire of an Immortal state after death notwithstanding the unwillingness of some abject minds loaden with earthy and base affections to submit to the stroke of Death which alone can transport them into that state doth need no further testimonies or illustration Lucretius If the Soul survive the body and be Cognoscent or Knowing after death doubtless it must be furnished with senses that so she may see hear c. in order to her knowledge but when once divorced from her Copartner the body she neither hath nor can have Organs for any such uses at all and therefore she can have no knowledge Athanasius Here again you touch upon that so often rejected confusion of Knowledge and Sensation as if they were one and the same thing when from sundry passages in my precedent discourses you might have easily collected that the sense ascribed to the Soul is neither Hearing nor seeing nor c. but the very power of Understanding or Intellection itself which is indeed called many times 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sense in a general acceptation of the word because Cognition is a Perception and because it comprehends in way of Eminency all the subordinate senses or Faculties of sensation i. e. by itself it knowes Colours as the Eye sounds as the Eare and so of the rest And this is the proper prerogative of superior Faculties that besides their owne higher and nobler Functions they comprehend likewise all the Functions of Inferiors and that in a transcendent and more excellent manner as I have already explained But as for the particular manner of the Souls Knowledge after death I remit you to Sr. Kenelme Digbies sublime Speculations concerning the condition of a separate Soul in which though perhaps you may not meet with such satisfaction as you expect yet you will meet with more than I can now give you without repeating his notions Lucretius Well Athanasius you would not have referred me to another but that you are almost exhausted and wearied with speaking thus long yourself and therefore it becomes me in civility to consider the weakness of your lungs and slowness of your tongue of both which I remember you have many years since often complained and to ease you of this penance my curiosity put upon you as soon as I have proposed one Objection more which wiser men than myself have thought not a little difficult to be solved and that in short is this Considering the vast disparity and in truth absolute incompossibility betwixt the affections of a Corporeal and Incorporeal Nature it seems unreasonable to conceive that they can be conjoyned in one Composition such as Man is if as you affirme his soul be an Immortal substance and his Body a Mortal Pray therefore make good the possibility of such a Conjunction and if you can explain what is the common caement or Glew that unites and holds them together and then I have done opposing you Athanasius You very well understand Epicurus doctrine of an Eternal and Incorporeal Inanity or space diffused through the world and commixed with all Bodies or Concretions which are yet dissoluble and doe you pretend after this that you cannot conceive
and so make two forms in every individual person both which opinions are erroneous and hereticall But that it doth include also those who distinguish the Soul into a Superior and Inferior part the one comprehending the Mind Intellect or Reason only the other the Sensitive Faculties and Appetites I am yet to learn Which I advertise you of not that I am unsatisfied with the reason you have given of those Conflicts we daily have within us For in truth it seems conveniently to explain the mystery of that Repugnancy betwixt our Rational and Corporeal Appetites but to intimate to you that I see no reason why the Human Soul may not be admitted to consist of two parts the one Immaterial and Intellectual called the Mind or Understanding and by way of excellency the Human Soul the other Material and only Sensitive by the mediation whereof that Divine part is united to the body during life And without admitting this Distinction I do not understand the meaning of that Sentence of Plato Mentem recipi in Anima Animam in corpore nor of that of Trismegistus or whoever was the Author of Poemander Mentem in Animam Animam in Spiritu Spiritum in corpore vehi Both which not obscurely intimate a certain Third Nature in Man intermediate between that Divine essence his reasonable Soul that Material or Elementary one his body which can be no other but what we call the Sensitive part of the Soul Athanasius Whether that condemnatory Sentence mentioned doth extend to such as hold the Reason to be one part of the Soul and the Sensitive power to be another in this moderate sense you are pleased to state it I will not much contend it being the proper businesse of Divines to determine that doubt But thus much I am certain of that it expresly toucheth all who assert a Duality of Souls Coexistent in man and that is enough I presume to justifie my quotation of it against them As for those remarkable texts of Plato and the great Hermes which you alleage I answer that it is very probable that those Philosophers who held the Soul to be Composed of two different Natures as these seem to have done had for their principal argument that intestine Repugnancy we have explained and that nothing can be contrary to it selfe Now their ground or Supposition that this Repugnancy is in the Soul it self or betwixt the Reasonable part and the Sensitive and not betwixt the Soul and Body only as I have clearly proved it to be being manifestly erroneous Assuredly their Inference cannot be longer considerable Neverthelesse if what I have already urged be not sufficiently clear and valid rather than shew my self so vain an Opiniator as to put my judgement into the ballance against so solid a one as yours I am content you should continue the possession of your present perswasion till you shall please to afford me some other opportunity of demonstrating the Unity and Simplicity of the Soul My present undertaking being only to evince the Immortality of it and this more out of compliance to Lucretius importunity than any confidence of singular ability in my self to mannage so noble and weighty an Argument If therefore I have not already discouraged your patience permit me now to apply my self wholly to that Province The Considerations which I have designed to alleage at this time in favour of the Souls Immortality are either Physical or Moral And the Physical or such as arise from the Nature of the Soul it self seem all to refer themselves to this one Capital Argument The Reasonable Soul of Man is Immaterial and therefore Immortal Here notwithstanding the main Difficulty be concerning the Antecedent yet convenience of Method requires me first to manifest the Force or Necessity of the Consequence The Reason therefore why what is Immaterial must also be Immortal is deduceable from hence that what wants Matter wants likewise parts into which it might be distracted and dissolved and what is uncapable of being dissolved must of perfect necessity alwayes continue to be what it is For whatever is of a nature free from the conditions of Matter or Body doth neither carry the principles of dissolution in it selfe nor fear them from External Agents and by pure consequence cannot but perpetually last or which is the very same be Immortall And this Reason seems to me both most evident and ineluctable Lucretius I perceive no such unavoidable Necessity For though an Immateriall thing cannot perish by the Exsolution of parts which is the only way by which all Corporeall natures are destroyed yet it is not impossible but the same may be destroyed some other way proper to Incorporealls and unknown to us Forasmuch as what ever is Principiate or once produced must have some cause of its production and then why may it not be againe destroyed by the selfe same Cause or by an action of that Cause contrary to that action by which it was at first produced Athanasius There are but two wayes comprehensible by the Understanding how any thing that hath existence in nature can perish the one is as I have already expressed by the Exsolution and Dissipation of its parts of which it was composed the other by absolute Adnihilation of its Entity as the Schoolmen phrase it Now though I confesse that as the former way of destruction is peculiar to Corporeall natures so I know nothing to the contrary but the Latter may be competent to Incorporeals which are produced ex nihilo for every dependent or what hath not its Being from its selfe but deriveth it from another is liable at the pleasure of that on which it doth depend to be deposed from that essence or state of Being in which it was by the same created yet that there is any such thing as Adnihilation though consistent with the Omnipotence of God is hardly conceiveable without derogation from his wisedome which pronounced all to be good that he had made and the formal reason of the Creatures goodnesse doth consist only in this that it seem'd good to the Divine will so to make them and to argue à posse ad esse that God doth or will adnihilate any thing because it is in his power to adnihilate is much below so good a Logician as Lucretius is Nor are we to suppose any Innovation in the generall state of things but that the course of the Universe or Nature doth constantly and invariably proceed in the same manner or tenour of method which was at first instituted by the wisedome of the Creator There is you know a twofold Immortality the one Absolute the other only Derivative That the First is competent onely to God cannot be denyed since it is impossible that that essence which is Non-principiate or never had beginning nor any Cause of its production should be determined or ever cease to be or meet with any cause of its destruction And that the latter may be competent to the whole Genus
from the impairment of the body by old age than is usually observed to arise pro tempore from a fit of drunkennesse or some disease of the brain For as when the malignity of the Spirits of Wine is overcome by sleep and dispelled by sweat or the violence of a disease possessing the brain or seat of reason is abated a man doth no longer suffer a delirium but returns to the clear use of his reasoning Faculty as before his head was disordered So if the Brain and Phansy were youthfully affected in an old man the Soul would no longer seem to doat but reason as perfectly as ever before in the vigour and flourishing state of youth From whence it is evident that whatever of change men have thought to be in the Soul by reason of that great decay generally attending old age is not really in the Soul but only in the Imagination and the Organ thereof which is not so well disposed as in the vigour of life And this might be conveniently explained by the similitude of a Scribe who cannot write so smooth and fine a hand with an old and blunted pen as with a new and sharp one But the thing is of it self too clear to need the illustration of Comparisons And this may suffice to dissolve your mighty Argument objected Lucretius My SECOND Argument is desumed from hence that the Soul is not only distempered and misaffected with diseases of her owne but infected and touch't also by those of the body and what is capable of disease or misaffection either protopathically or sympathically is doubtless capable of dissolution This you may remember was long since urged by Panaetius of Epicurus sect for Cicero primo Tuscul. speaking of him saith alteram autem rationem affert nihil esse quod dole at quin id aegrum esse quoque possit quod autem in morbum cadat id etiam interiturum dolere autem Animos ergo etiam interire Athanasius As for such Diseases of the body which you suppose extend to the discomposure of the Soul by way of sympathy as particulary the Phrensy Madnesse Hypochondriacall Melancholy the Lethargy Hydrophobia and others which work upon the brain and perturb the Animal Faculties the same Answer will serve to exempt the Soul from suffering any detriment from them which I just now alleaged against her decay in old age For though in truth the Mind cannot exercise its proper functions duely and rightly in fits of Delirium the Phrensy and the like nor at all in Lethargies and Apoplexies yet this ought not to be ascribed to any depravation or change in the substance of the Mind itself but only to an indisposition in the Phansy and Animal Organs And as for Passions of Grief Fear Remorse c. which are reputed the proper Diseases of the Mind in the first place we may derive our Answer concerning them from the place of Aristotle newly cited For he there subjoyns Amores odium alia passiones esse non intellectûs sed corporis ipsum habentis esse enim fortè Intellectum aliquid divinum passionis expers By which his meaning is that the proper Function of the Intellect is to understand and reason though he was pleased to reckon Cogitation among the Passions and that all Passions belong to the Appetite either Concupiscible or Irascible which is a Corporeal Faculty For though Passion be posterior to Cognition and dependent thereupon so that it may seem to be received in the subject to which Cognition doth belong that is to the Mind nevertheless because the Mind while resident in the body doth make use of corporeal Images pre-admitted into the Imagination and in the mean while the Phansy in imagining what things are doth co-operate together with the Mind and the motion of the Corporeal or Sensitive Faculty followeth after the perception of objects by the Phansy thence it comes that the whole Commotion or Passion doth belong to the Appetite and Body the Mind all that while remain free and unmoved after the same manner as a Master and servant travelling together the servant carries the burden and the Master goes light and free and unconcerned in the weight and trouble thereof But forasmuch as we must admit a certain Appetite properly competent to the Soul itself viz. the Rational Appetite from the name of its action usually denominated the Will by which we find ourselves secretly inclined and carried towards things Honest and Divine and which ought to remain in the Soul even after death since it must then be sensible either of pleasure in the state of felicity or of pain in the state of misery therefore I confess we cannot deny but there are some certain Motions in the Soul itself which in respect of the analogy they seem to hold to those of the sensual or Corporeal Appetite and that we cannot otherwise express them may well enough be called Passions yet these are not to be conceived to arise from any dilatation compression solution of continuity and the like violent motions that might adferr any harme or detriment to the substance of the Soul Nor indeed ought this to seem strange or difficult in a thing that is Incorporeal since even among Corporeals we observe some that have a substance unalterable and so inconsumable by the most violent motions in Nature as Gold Amianthus and the like and that Aristotle makes the substance of Heavenly bodies such as that it cannot be altered heated or dissolved by the heat of the Sun as all sublunary bodies are Lucretius What think you then Athanasius of Drunkeness wherein both the Rational Faculty is highly perturbed and the Motive as much enfeebled neither of which could be if the Soul did not suffer from the violence of the wine and what is capable of suffering such damage from external causes cannot be incapable of totall dissolution from the same in case their force and activity become more intense Therefore the soul is Mortal Athanasius Why truly I think this Argument as light and trivial as your former and that the same solution will serve to both For it is not the Mind which is overwhelmed with the deluge of Wine but the brain and seat or instrument of the Phansy whose images being beclouded and confused by the fumes or spirits of the wine brought thither by the arteries it is impossible the Mind should make use of them with that clearness and distinction as when they were pure and in order And as for that general weakness which remaines for a while after the drunken fit is over in all the members of the body this is not to be referred to the Mind neither but to the Motive-Faculty whose instruments and principally the Nerves are then misaffected and in a manner relaxed so as they become indisposed to the regiment of the Mind The best Lutenist in the world you know cannot play a tune upon a Lute whose strings are relaxed by moisture or otherwise altered from their requisite
temper and yet his skill in musick never a whit the less why then should you conceive that the soul should be able to conserve the harmony of voluntary motions in the sinewes muscles and members of the body when the requisite tenour of those her instruments is depraved by the stupefactive and relaxing force of the Wine drank in excesse The Members of the body are fit instruments to execute the motions by the Soul impressed upon them but when they are surrounded with the malignant and Narcotical vapours of Wine and thereby relaxed or oppressed they become uncapable of the Souls mandates and government till those vapours being again discussed they have recovered their natural temper and due disposition and yet the Soul it self all that while remain vigorous and strong as in Sobriety contrary to what this your Objection supposeth Lucretius Since you so easily expede your self from the Objections drawn from Diseases and Ebriety I shall urge you with one that seems more tough and knotty and that is this As the Body so also the Soul or Mind is capable of being cured or rectified by the Art of Medicine and if so there must be either an addition to or a detraction of somwhat from the Soul Physick being a Detraction of what is superfluous and an addition of what is deficient in mans Nature And therefore the Soul being capable of addition and detraction is capable likewise of destruction Athanasius Alas Lucretius this is still a branch of the same stock and to it I may easily accommodate an Answer out of what I even now replied to your supposed sympathy of the Soul with the body in some Diseases For albeit it be most true that by Hellebor and other Antimelancholical remedies we Physicians usually cure Madnesse called Insania and Amentia Unsoundness or Distraction of the Mind Yet is it as true that this Cure is wrought only upon the brain or seat of the Imagination which being purged of that adust and blackish humour which oppressed it and altered from the distemper therein caused by the noxious and intoxicating qualities of that humour the Mind doth soon return to perform all its proper Functions as regularly and exactly as at any time before the patient was invaded with that distemper of his brain and depravation of his Phansy So that as when a man go's haulting because one of his shooes is higher than the other we may well enough say that man doth hault though all the cause of his haulting be only the inequality of his shooes and to make him go right again there needs no more but to moke his shooes equally high So when a man haults as it were in his Reason or fails in the evennesse and decorum of his Discourse we may say that man is Unsound or lame in his Mind though that unsoundnesse consist only in his Brain or Imagination and to restore him to the right and becomming manage of his reason there needs no more but to rectify his Phansy or Brain in whose preternatural distemper alone his madnesse doth consist Again forasmuch as there are as it were some certain diseases peculiar only to the Mind at lest in that Metaphorical sense I have already explained And that these depravities commonly called Diseases of the Mind are capable of cure by that which is truly the Physick of the Mind viz. Moral Philosophy Therefore ought we to conceive that as the Mind is subject to those its Affections without any the least detriment or alteration of its substance so also may it be cured of them again without any alteration addition or detraction substantial For since the Diseases of the Mind are nothing else but certain Evill or vitious Habits contracted by custom and those Habits are nothing else but certain Modes or Manners of its standing affected to such or such objects Thence comes it that those Vicious Habits may be sensibly expelled by the induction of contrary Habits that is of Virtuous ones like as a Crooked staffe may be made streight only by bowing it the contrary way And though no similitude be exactly congruous in this case because the Affections of Corporeal Natures hold no correspondence with those of Incorporeals Yet I choose to make use of this of the rectification of a crooked staff because the Crookednesse of the staff doth in some sort represent the Curvity of a Mind misaffected by vicious Habits and the Rectitude of a staff equally represent that Rightnesse of the Mind which is acknowledged in the Soveraignty and Habit of Virtue And thus you see that the Curability of the Mind by the prescripts of Morality doth not import its dissolubility as you infer but rather the Contrary for no Moral precept can be applied to or work upon a Corporeal or Dissoluble essence Lucretius From Diseases and Remedies both of Body and Mind let us have recourse to Death and see if from the manner of its Tyranny we can raise an Objection or two against your opinion of the Souls being naturally exempted from the same It is observed that Men generally die Membratim limb after limb death advancing by sensible degrees from the extream parts to the Central and more noble as if the Soul were not a substance intirely collected into it self or resident in any one particular place of the body as you seem to conceive but diffused and scatter'd in several pieces and so subject to dissipation part after part Athanasius The Solution of this is far from being difficult For conceiving the soul as Incorporeal to be diffused through the whole body not by Extension of bulk but by Replication or as the Schools speak by position of the same Entity in each part of the body it is easy to understand that the soul when the members grow cold and mortified doth then indeed instantly cease to be in them yet is not cut off piece-meal or diminished and so sensibly or gradually dissipated as you suppose but the whole of it remains in so much of the body as yet continues warme and perfused by the vital Heat untill ceasing longer to animate the principal seat or throne of its residence whether the Brain or Heart it at length bid adieu to the whole and withdraw itself intire and perfect What I here say of the Constitution of the whole Soul in the whole body and the whole Soul in every part of the body by way of Replication or Position of the same Entity in divers places at the same time is I confess som what obscure and the imperfection of our knowledge in the affections of Immateriall natures will hardly permit us to illustrate it yet lest you should think it meerly imaginary and sophisticall I may assert the possibility and reasonableness of it by a similitude of an intentional species or visible Image Which all men allow so to be diffused through the whole medium or space as that it is at the same time whole in every part of that space because in what part soever
it reasonable that an Incorporeal should be conjoyned to a Corporeal But suppose you really cannot conceive it reasonable must it therefore be unreasonable when so many and so eminent Philosophers have understood and allowed the reasonableness of this Conjunction What think you in the first place of Plato Aristotle and all their sectators who unanimously held the Anima Mundi or Universal Soul and that being diffused through all parts of the Universe it associateth and mixeth itself with all things and totam intus agitat molem And then what think you of those words of the great Hermes quoted by Lactantius when discoursing of the Nature of Man and how he was Created by God he saith Ac idem ex utraque natura immortali putà ac mortali unam hominis naturam texebat ipsum quadamtenus immortalem quadamtenus mortalem faciens ac eundem accipiens in medio quasi interstitio heinc divinae immortalisque illeinc mortalis obnoxiaeque mutationi naturae constituit ut in omnia intuens omnia miraretur And thus Trismegistus from whence it came that Man was esteemed as it were the Horizon of the Universe in whom Supreme natures are joyned to the most Low and the Heavenly to the Earthy and this with admirable correspondency and as beseems the perfection of the Universe because since there are some Natures purely Incorporeal and Immortal and others purely Corporeal and Mortal that these Extremes might not be without a Mean nothing seems more congruous than that there should be a certain sort of third Natures so mixed and compound of both the others as to be Incorporeal and Immortal on one part and Corporeal and Mortal on the other Again whereas you imagine it absurd that natures so extremely different should concur to constitute one Composition I beseech you Lucretius are not Heat and Cold white and black as different each from other as Immortal and Mortal and yet you see they are often conjoyned together so as that a Middle or Third nature doth result from their union as in particular warme from Heat and Cold and Grey or browne from white and black Nay there seems so much the less repugnancy betwixt Immortal and Mortal Incorporeal and Corporeal natures by how much they are the less Different and Incompossible because they are only as it were Disparate among themselves and capable of conserving a whole nature but Heat and Cold Whiteness and Blackness are absolute Contraries and cannot consist together without reciprocal destruction or maintain a durable Union And thus much for the First part of your Demand viz the Possibility of a Conjunction betwixt an Incorporeal and a Corporeal Nature As for the remainder viz what is the Common Medium Cement or Glew by which two such different natures are married and united into one Compositum I Answer that I conceive it to be the Blood especially the spiritual and most elaborate or refined part thereof according to that ancient opinion of Critias Sentire maximè proprium esse Animae atqe hoc inesse propter sanguinis naturam commemorated by Aristotle though with dissent in the 2 Ch. of his 1. Book de Anima and with the testimony of sundry admirable Experiments both revived and asserted by our perspicacious Contryman Dr. Harvey in his Exercitations concerning the Generation of Animals For since the visible observations of the Manner and process of Nature in the production of the Chicken in and from the Egg doe assure that the Blood is the part of the body which is first generated nourished and moved and that the Soul is Excited and as it were Enkindled first from the blood doubtless the blood is that in which the operations vegetative and sensitive do first manifest themselves that in which the vital Heat the primary and immediate instrument of the Soul especially as to Animation is innate and congenial that which is the Common Vinculum or Caement of the Soul and body and that by the mediation whereof as a vehicle the Soul doth transmit her conserving and invigorating influence into all parts of the body Nay considering that the Blood by perpetual Circulation doth flow like a river of Living water round the body penetrating into and irrigating the substance of all the parts and at the same time communicating to them both Heat and Life and that the Heart is framed for no other end but that by perpetual pulsation together with the concurrence of the veins and arteries it may receive this blood and againe propell it into all the body I say these things duely considered it can be but a Paradox at most to affirme that the Soul having its first and perhaps principal residence in the Blood may very well be conceived to be in respect thereof Tota in toto and tota in qualibet parte And lastly concerning the Manner of this Conjunction of the Soul and body by the Mediation of this vital Nectat the Blood it is not necessary with the Vulgar to imagine that they should mutually touch and by hooks take reciprocall hold each of other in order to Cohaesion and constant Union for that is competent only to Corporeals but that Incorporeals should be conjoyned either one to another or to Corporeals no more is required but an Intimate Praesence which is yet a kind of Contact and so may serve in stead of mutual Apprehension and Continency So that this special Manner of Praesence is that and only that by which an Incorporeal Entity may be united to a Corporeal And now I have explained those difficulties concerning the Conjunction of the Soul and Body the one an Incorporeal and Immortal Being the other Corporeal and Mortal which you seemed to think in-explicable I expect you should be as good as your promise no longer to oppose me but hereafter concurr with me in opinion that The Soul is an Immortal substance and that its Immortality is not only credible by Faith or upon Authority Divine but also Demonstrable by Reason or the Light of Nature Lucretius You may remember Sr I told you in the beginning that though I am an Epicurean in many things concerning Bodies yet as a Christian I detest and utterly renounce the doctrine of that Sect concerning Mens Souls and that I askt your permission to interrupt you sometimes in your discourses by intermixing such Doubts and Objections as seemed to render the Demonstration of the Souls Immortality by meet Reason exceeding difficult if not altogether impossible to this end only that I might the more fully experiment the strength of your Arguments to the Contrary So that notwithstanding all my Contradiction you ought to believe me still as strongly perswaded of the truth of what you have asserted as if I had acted your part and undertaken the assertion of the same myself my diffidence being not of the Souls Incorruptibility but of the possibility of its Demonstration by you or any man else And now though you have brought I confess most excellent Arguments to
for your service Isodicastes You are unreasonably modest thus to diminish yourself Athanasius And as immoderate in your overvaluation of my Capacity to expresse my affection to Learning and Learned Men otherwise than only by the content I take in their conversation But let us leave this formality of Complements to young Courtiers as savouring of lesse plainnesse and freedom than ought to be amongst the Votaries of Truth and Science when they meet together And give me leave to enquire of you for it seems you came but lately thence somwhat concerning the state of Learning now in England I have been told of great Discoveries made by men of your Faculty there in Anatomy Diseases and their waies of Cure Far different from the Principles and Doctrine of the Antients I have heard also that the Mathematicks are in high reputation among you and have received much if not of improvement yet of illustration from the happy industry of some in our Universities Pray therefore let it not be troublesome to you to give us some hints of the particulars wherein the Wits of our Nation have of late been so highly beneficiall to the Commonweal of Philosophy Athanasius Sir you have laid a command upon me which is impossible for me to obey without shamefully betraying my own ignorance and by a disadvantageous representation of them much disparaging the noble successes of those Heroicall Wits among our Country-men who have addicted themselves to the Reformation and Augmentation of Arts and Sciences and made a greater Progresse in that glorious design than many ages before them could aspire to notwithstanding all their large hopes specious promises and manifold attempts Neverthelesse being your command I shall strive to yeeld obedience to it so far forth at least as to recount to you in brief what upon the suddain I can call to mind of the most considerable Novelties in Naturall Philosophy Medicine the Optiques Astronomy and Geometry found out by the ingeny and labours of men now living in England as yet in the prime of their strength and years In the Colledge of Physicians in London which without offence to any thing but their own Modesty I may pronounce to be the most eminent Society of men for Learning Judgement and Industry that is now or at any time hath been in the whole World you may behold Solomons House in reality Some there are who constantly imploy themselves in dissecting Animals of all kinds as well living as dead and faithfully recording all singularities that occur to their observation both in the severall species and individualls That so they may come to know what is perfectly naturall what preternatural what rare and monstrous among the parts of them And also what resemblance there is betwixt the Conformation of the parts in the body of Man and those in the bodies of other Animals ordained by Nature to the same or like and equivalent uses So that it will be hard for any man to bring thither any Fish Bird or Insect whose Emtrails these genuine Sons of Democritus are not already intimately acquainted with or at least which they will not with admirable dexterity and skill anatomize without confusion of the smallest Organ and instantly explore the proper office of each Organical part by remarking the Figure Substance Vessells and situation of it And I have some reason to put you in hope that ere long you may see a Collection of most of the Anatomical Experiments that these Men have made in the bodies of Beasts Birds Fishes and Insects of various sorts together with the Figure of each and all its principle Organs expressed to the life in Copper-Cuts and an exact account as well of the Analogy as Dissimilitude that is betwixt them and others of consimilar uses in Man the grand Rule or Prototype to all inferior Creatures Which is a Method certainly of inestimable use towards the complement of Natural History and the only way to perfect that Comparative Anatomy whose defect the Lord St. Alban so much complained of in our Art Others there are who daily investigate arguments to confirm and advance that incomparable invention of Doctor Harvey the Circulation of the Blood And have already brought the Doctrine thereof to so high a degree of perfection that it is not only admitted and admired by all the Schools in Europe but the advancers of it also are able to solve most of the difficult phaenomena in Pathology only by that Hypothesis And frequently effect such Cures by having respect thereunto in their intentions and prescripts as well in Cronique as Acute Diseases as could not be hoped from any other ground-work or supposition formerly laid At least not with equall correspondence to the true method of Healing which ought to be deduced from Principles of the greatest evidence and certainty in Nature among which certainly this of the Circulation is the chiefest And though I deny not but the like Cures may have been performed by Physicians who never dream't of any such thing as the continual motion of the blood from the heart by the Arteries to the outward parts of the body and thence back again by the veins into the heart but rested in the Antique opinion of a difference betwixt Arterial and Venal blood both as to substance and uses Yet I may safely affirm that the Remedies used by them wrought the effects aimed at by waies altogether accidental and beside the direct scope of those who gave them And to do a cure only by Accident you well know is much below the ambition of a Rational Physician who ought to have a firm and well-grounded Theory of the Faculties and Virtues proper to each particular Instrument he is to make use of in rectifying the disordered Oeconomy of nature in mans body For my own part I speak ingenuously I am so well satisfied of the Verity of this Harvean Circulation and have so seriously considered the great advantages that may be made of it in order to the ennobling the Art of Medicine by reducing the maxims of it from obscure and conjectural to evident and demonstrative And by accommodating the same to the explanation of most of the Apparences in Pathology That I have had some thoughts of undertaking to justify all the Aphorisms of Hippocrates which concern the Nature and Sanation of Diseases by reasons and considerations deduced meerly from this one Fountain the Hypothesis of the Circulation of the blood And if my troubles had not deprived me of leisure I had ere this made some progress in that enterprise But I have digressed and ask your pardon for it There are moreover among the members of this venerable Society who pursuing the hint some few years since given them by Iacobus Mullerus a German in an Academical exercise of the nature of Animal and Voluntary Motion have gone far toward the explication of the reasons and manner of the Motions of the Muscles by the principles of Mechanicks An enterprise of great difficulty and long
desiderated as leading us to understand the Geometry observed by the Creator in the fabrick of the Microcosme and the verification of Anatomical assertions by demonstrations Mathematical The same persons likewise have demonstrated that we goe because we fall i. e. that each step we advance is but a shifting the body to a fresh Centre of Gravity And our Rest but a remaining or fixing of it upon the same As also that in progression the Head of a man is moved through more of space than his feet by almost one part of four in respect of its greater distance from the Centre of the Earth which indeed was toucht and only toucht upon by that prodigie of Mathematical subtleties Galileo in his Second Dialogue de Mundo There are also of these Miners of Nature who have found out more probable and commodious Uses for the Glandules or fatty Kernells scituate in divers parts of mans body than were assigned unto them by all antecedent Anatomists For whereas Those generally conceived them to have been intended by Nature to no nobler an end than either for the Imbibition or dreining of superfluous humours inundating the parts adjacent to them Or for the susteining of Veins Arteries and Nerves in their progresse from part to part These have discovered that some Glandules serve for the preparation of the Succus Nutritius or juice that nourisheth the whole body That others are official to the sequestration of some lesse profitable and disagreeable parts of the same nutritive juice or Vital Nectar And that a third sort of them are ordained for reduction of those same lesse profitable parts after their separation or streining back again into the masse of blood by the small veins that are contiguous to them And among these likewise there is one A person of singular note for his Universal Learning and indefatigable industry in Disquisition who aiming to promote the certainty of these New Tenents 1. That according to the Anatomical observations of Ioh. Pecquet a young Physician of Diepp in Normandy the Chylus is convey'd from the stomach by the Venae Lacteae or Milky Veins into a certain Receptacle or common promptuary scituate at the bottom of the Mesentery and thence transmitted upwards by a conduit running all along on the inside of the Spine of the back to the subclavian veins and so delivered into the right Ventricle of the heart there to be turned into blood 2. That the Liver is not the immediate instrument of Sanguification but inservient only to the sequestration of the Cholerick parts of the blood and the conveying the same into the Gall to be thence excluded into the Duts 3. That there is no Anastomosis or mutual Inosculation betwixt the small branches of the Vena Portae and those of the Vena Cava in the substance of the Liver as was generally believed from the infancy of Physick till of late years when this Gentleman was so happy as to evince the contrary by ocular demonstration 4. That there are certain thin slender and transparent Vessells for the most part accompaning the veins especially in the liver named Vasa Lymphatica by Thomas Bartholinus who seems first to have discovered them and Lymphe-ducts by others since containing a clear liquor like water which they exonerate into the common Receptacle of the Chyle newly mentioned to the end that being again infused together with so much of the Chyle as enters the veins into the blood it may both prevent the Coagulation of it and also in respect of its predisposition to Volatility associating it self to the Vital spirits in the Heart and Arteries promote the Mication or boyling motion of the blood And 5. That the solid parts of the body are not in the general nourished by the blood which He conceives to be only the fewel of the Vital Flame or Heat and in regard of its great Volatility and harsh and grating nature more likely to prey upon and consume than feed and repair the substance of the solid parts but by the sweeter and more unctuous part of the Chylus drawn up by the mediation of the Nerves especially those of the sixth Conjugation called the Recurrent Nerves into the brain and there elaborated and afterward transmitted by the Nerves to all parts of the body This worthy Person I say aiming to promote the certainty of these recent Opinions hath collected illustrated and disposed them into one Systeme Hoping thereby to declare their mutual Consistence as well each with other as with the demonstrative doctrine of the Circulation of the blood And at the same time put an end to all disputes concerning the Milky veins the use of the Spleen of the Capsulae Atrabilariae or Renes succenturiati Deputy Kidnies as Casserius Placentinus called them and sundry other Difficulties in Anatomy But whether or no he hath attained to the full pitch of his hopes in that design you will be best able to judge when you have read and examined the weight of his experiments and discourses delivered in his excellent Book de Anatomia Hepatis In the mean time give me leave to advertise you that his modesty is so great as that he expresly professes his own want of full satisfaction concerning the truth of sundry particulars therein contained And therefore presents them to the World as positions not of apodictical evidence but great probability and worthy to be embraced only till time shall have brought more credible ones to light Furthermore among these Merchants for light we have some so excellently well skilled in all sorts of Medical Simples that they know not only the names but the faces also and virtues of most of the Plants in Europe And can besides that give you a better account of the American druggs than Piso Margravius and others notwithstanding the large volumes they have compiled concerning that subject They likewise so well understand all Fossilia and the several kinds of Minerals pretious Stones Salts concreted juices and other subterranean productions That even Lapidaries and Miners come to learn of them We have others who enquire into the mysteries of Refiners Belfounders and all others that deal in Metals Others who search out the frauds and sophistications of Wine-Coopers and Vintners in the brewing feeding stumming and adulterating of Wines Others who can inform you exactly of the severall hurtfull Arts of Brewers Bakers Butchers Poulterers and Cooks All which are of very great detriment to the health of men though the danger be commonly undiscerned And were the civil Magistrate but half so careful to reform as these Doctors have been in detecting those publick abuses the Citty of London would soon find by happy experience that Physicians are both as willing and able to preserve health as to restore it In a word there is nothing escapes their examination which may any way concern the safety of mans life or the knowlege whereof can conduce to make themselves every way accomplisht in their Profession And as for Chymistry which I
like conditions of Matter Truth is I have often heard among your soaring and long-winged Wits of Abstracted and Unbodied Notions and have somtimes perplexed my mind and almost crackt the membranes of my brain in striving how to comprehend them And yet I alwaies found my Phansy so inseparably conjoined to my Intellect as if they were both one and the same Faculty Nor am I yet able to distinguish betwixt my Imagination and Intellection And when once you shall have satisfied me of a reall Difference betwixt them I shall soon confesse you have gone very near the Demonstration of the Souls Immortality Because if the operations of the Intellect be clearly distinct from those of the Phansy which is a Corporeal Faculty and therefore limited to the perception and representation of only Corporeal Natures It will almost follow that the Intellect which is capable of knowing Incorporeals is a substance clearly distinct from the body and so Immaterial since different effects must have different Causes And as for your other Postulate viz. the exemption of my mind from contrary prejudice This also is what I should expect from the efficacy of your intended Arguments For as I told you before I believe the Immortality of the Soul but cannot perswade my self of the possibility of its Demonstration by any other but Divine reasons And it must be your work to convince me of the error of that perswasion Neverthelesse I will assure you of my best Attention and that I come not with a resolution not to be satisfied Athanasius Dear Sir have patience a while and you shall soon perceive both the Necessity and Equity of what I require And in the mean time do not take occasion to anticipate my Notions but leave me to deliver them in their due places and order Lucretius I shall punctually observe your commands and therefore if you think fit immediately addresse your self to your Demonstration Athanasius First it will be convenient in order to the prevention of all Equivocation and Logomachy that may arise from the various use of the word Soul that we insist a little on the examination of that vulgar Opinion which admitteth a real distinction betwixt Animus and Anima the Mind and the Soul In regard it seems to be the very same according to which many Doctors of the Church have conceived the Soul to have Two Parts a Superior and Inferior the one being the Mind Intellect or Reason the other comprehending the Sense Appetite Natural and Brutish There are you know many eminent men as well Theologues as Philosophers who as they hold Man to be composed of two parts a Soul and a Body so do they conceive that his soul is likewise composed of a twofold substance the one Incorporeal or Immaterial immediately created by God and infused into the body at the instant of its Empsychosis or first Animation in the Mothers Womb The other Corporeall or Material originally contained in the Parents Seed and derived ex traduce from the Seminalities of Male and Female commixed in coition which is as it were the Medium or Disposition by the intermediate nature whereof the Diviner part is conjoined and united to the Elementary or Body And this Opinion they ground chieflly upon that speech of the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I perceive a Law in my members warring against the Law of my Mind c. For say they since it is impossible that one Simple Essence or thing should war against or have contrariety to it self from this Repugnancy betwixt the Sense and the Mind or Reason it seems necessarily consequent that the Sensitive and Rational Soul are things essentially different each from other Whereunto they superadd also that unlesse this Distinction be admitted we can never well understand how Man as a living Creature can be said to be in one part little lower than the Angels and in another to be like the Horse or Mule that have no understanding How in respect of one part he is made after the Image of God and in respect of another he is compared to the Beasts that perish How in one respect he acknowledgeth God to be his Author and Principle and in another he owns his production upon his Parents How in one relation he is said to be Immortall and in another subject to death equally with the smallest worme Notwithstanding it is not either the Authority or Arguments of these Men that seem prevalent enough to bring me to be of their persuasion For as to their Authority I could thereunto oppose that of some Fathers yea and Councils who not onely reprehend but condemne all such as make a duality of Souls in man were not the thing already well known to you However suffer me to put you in mind that the pious and learned Conimbricenses who certainly have most profoundly and judiciously of all others handled this Question though they proceed not so far as to censure this conceipt to be Hereticall as some others before them had don yet they expressy declare their Dissent from it And as for their Reasons alledged I thinke them likewise insufficient For all that Psychomachy or intestine Conflicts which these men imagine to be betwixt the inferior part of the soul which is called the sensitive and the superior called the Rational or betwixt the Natural Appetites and the Will doe arise onely from the repugnancy or contrariety which is between those motions of the spirits which are on one side caused by the senses affected by externall objects and those motions of the spirits which on the other side are caused by the will after the soul hath deliberated upon their conveniency and utility And in truth each individuall man hath one and onely one soul in which is no variety of parts that which is the Sensitive is also the Rationall and all her Appetites are absolute Volitions The cause of these mens error seems to be this that they could not well distinguish the Functions proper to the soul from the Functions proper to the body to which alone we ought in right to ascribe whatever we observe in our selves to be repugnant to our Reason So that in Man there is no other Contract or Contrariety of Affections but what consisteth in the contrary motions caused by the spirits and purer part of the blood in that part of the body in which as in its principall and more immediate organ the soul is enthroned and exerciseth her faculties whether that be the Plexus Choroides in the brain as most Physicians conceive or the Heart as the Scripture seems to intimate or the Glandula pinealis in the centre of the brain as Des Cartes affirmeth or any other part whatsoever one of these motions arising from the determination of the spirits by the will one way and the other from the determination of them by the corporeal Appetite another way And hence it comes often to pass that these impulses being contrary each to other the stronger doth impede and
of Immaterial Essences notwithstanding the power of God which can reduce them to Nothing as well as it hath educed them from nothing is likewise undeniable for supposing as we ought that God doth nothing contrary to the establish't Lawes and decreed order of Nature and that this Generall state of things doth continue still the same which his Wisedom at first instituted it doth evidently follow that what He hath once made Incorporeal shall persever to be the same to all eternity I remember a passage in Scaliger Exercit. 307. sect 20. that most fitly expresseth the summe of this consideration and therefore shall recite it to you Solus Deus est verè immortalis incorruptibilis quia solus exse suum esse habet atque à nullo dependet Dei verò respectu omnia creata mortalia corruptibilia sunt quae â Creatoris nutu deponi possunt ab essentia illa in qua constituta sunt Non corumpuntur tamen quaedam ut Angeli Anima Rationalis quia Creator non vult ea corrumpi nihil contrarii ipsis à quo corrumpantur condidit nec eas ita materiae immersit ut extra eam nec subsistere nec operari possint And this I conceive sufficient to manifest the necessity of Immortality from Incorporiety Lucretius But I am not satisfied of any necessity why you should have recourse to Immateriality for the proof of Immortality seeing that even among the Father there are some who maintain Immortality to be consistent with Corporality and amongst the best Philosophers some assert the Coelestial Bodies to be Incorruptible and deduce that their incorruptibility from the nature of their Forme which neverthelesse they account not incorporeal Athanasius Those Fathers held some Corporeal natures to be Immortal not ex ratione essentiae but ex Divina Gratia only from the decree of the Divine beneplacet otherwise than I affirme of Incorporeals and particularly the Soul of man And as for that opinion of some Philosophers it is enough that it doth not oppose our Consequence i. e. that granting some bodies to be Incorruptible it followes not that therefore Incorporeals are the lesse but rather the more inccorruptible Whatever becomes of that Opinion I say that because there is no Body which is not in processe of time exsoluble into such parts of which it doth consist in as much as whether their principles be Atomes which by their naturall agility and contrary impulsions alwayes cause intestine commotions and a constant civill warre in the very entrals of Concretions or whether they be Elementary Qualities active and reciprocally repugnant which cannot be idle but unnecessantly act one upon another they carry the possibility of Dissolution in their own Composition I say considering this it is clearly necessary that all bodies according to the Fundamental Laws of Nature be subject to Dissolution their parts being at length exturbed from their primary site or Position and Union and a total resolution succeding thereupon Besides you well know that that Tenent of Aristotle of the Incorruptibility of Coelestial Bodies hath been exploded long since And that what his Interpreters have so magnificently talked of the Nature of the Caelestial Form is a meer dream a chimera of immoderate subtility and worthy only to be laught at especially after those many observations of changes in them made by the Modern Astronomers evincing the contrary Lucretius But do not you incur an Absurdity in supposing that there is any substance Immaterial or produced-produced-Nature Incorporeal when as the Fathers many of them have judged that what is not a Body is Nothing and that my Tutor Epicurus hath expressly taught that in Nature nothing is Incorporeal beside Space or Inanity Athanasius I know no Father but only Tertullian whom St. Augustine doth smartly reprehend for asserting it of that unsound opinion and to him we may oppose the Authority of all at least of most the others who solidly justified the contrary And to Epicurus I oppose Plato Aristotle and sundry others who would not admit any such thing as Emptinesse in the Universe but expressly affirmed that there were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Substances separate incorporeal and destitute of parts What if there were a few who could not elevate their minds so high as to conceive any thing Incorporeal besides Inanity doth it therefore follow that those many and great men who did conceive the contrary were fools and that I who likewise affirm the existence of Incorporeal Natures doe run my self upon an Absurdity I hope Lucretius you will be more favourable to your self than to own the impertinence of any such Sequel Lucretius To deal freely with you I find the Notion of Immaterial Substance to be somwhat too sublime for the comprehension of so humble and short-sighted a reason as mine is But perhaps you may assist it with the Telescope of yours upon occasion of somwhat or other in the processe of your discourse And therefore go on directly to the conviction of your Antecedent viz. that the Rational Soul is Immortal for upon that hang's all the weight of the businesse Athanasius The Antecedent viz. that the Reasonable Soul is Immaterial is evident from the Nature and Manner of its Operations For since it is a certain rule that every Agent is known by its Effects and that all Formes reveal themselves by their peculiar and distinct energies and waies of Operation and as certain that the Actions of man as a Cogitating and Intellectuall Essence are of so noble and divine a strain as that it is impossible they should be performed by a meer Material Agent or Corporeal substance however disposed qualified or modified What truth can be more perspicuous more strong than this that the Soul of man by which alone he is impowered to think and understand is an Immaterial Substance Now all the Actions of the Human Soul are referrible to two General Heads or Fountains whereof the one is Perception or the single Operation of the Intellect the other Volition or the single Operation of the Will For to be sensible to Imagine and purely to understand are only diverse manners of Perceiving and to desire to hate to affirm to deny to embrace to refuse are only divers manners of Willing To examine these Actions therefore more particularly let us in the first place turn our eye for a glance or two upon the Will which though but a branch of the Soul and as it were a secundary Faculty in respect of the Intellect doth clearly shew the Immateriality of the Soul whose Faculty it is For insomuch as the Will doth by Natural and Congenial tendency prosecute Bonum Honestum which is for the most part repugnant to Bonum Delectabile or such Good as is only Sensual and Corporeal It is a good Consequence that the Will is an Incorporeal Faculty it being impossible for a Corporeal Faculty to apprehend an Incorporeal Object such as Good abstracted from all relations of the Sense Again forasmuch
their Nature but only that they are two we repeat the same Idea we had before which comes thereby to be Universal and we call this number by the same Universal name After the same manner when we behold a Figure comprehended in Three lines we form in our Mind a certain Idea thereof which we call the Idea of a Triangle and we afterward alwaies use the same Idea as an Universal one to represent to us all other Figures consisting of three lines Again when we perceive that among Triangles there are some which have one right angle and others which have not we form in our selves the Universal Idea of a rectangle Triangle which in relation to the former Idea as more General we call a Species And that rectitude of the Angle is the Universal Difference by which all rectangle Triangles are distinguished from others Further that in all such Triangles the Basis is in power equal to the powers of the sides this is a Propriety competent to all such and only to such Triangles And lastly if we suppose that some of these Triangles are moved and others not this will be in them an Universal Accident And after this Manner doth the Understanding frame those Five Universals Genus Species Difference Propriety and Accident which really are but so many several Modes or Manners of our Cogitating or Thinking and having no existence in Nature but only in Mans Understanding do bear pregnant testimony of its being Immaterial Lucretius Here you say it is undeniably certain that the Understanding hath a power to abstract things from all conditions of Matter and all Particularities when for my part I professe I can find no such power in my self For after many the most serious essayes I could make I could never yet conceive an Universal but there doth alwaies occur to my Mind somwhat of Particularity and that under some certain Magnitude Figure Colour and the like adjuncts of Body So that it seems either I have not an Understanding as Active and Comprehensive as other men have or else those Unbodied and Universal Notions of which you and other Philosophers talke so solemnly are meer Chimera's invented by curious and wanton Wits to amuse such vulgar heads as mine is Athanasius You cannot be ignorant of that power in your self as you pretend Lucretius For though your Mind is not capable of devesting Objects of their particular Magnitude Figure Colour and the other concomitants of Matter altogether and at once yet it can easily doe it successively or one after another and that is sufficient to attest and manifest that the Intellect hath this power of Abstracting and forming Universals as I have explained Lucretius I have read a certain book written by one Hieronymus Rorarius a learned Prelate conteining a collection of all Arguments commonly urged to prove that many Brute Animals have the use of Reason not only aswell as but in a greater proportion than Man himself hath and among the rest He affirmes that they also frame Universals as in particular the species of Man according to which as often as they see a two-legged and erect Animal they take it to be a Man and not a Lion or Horse or the like And if so what becomes of this Prerogative of the Human Intellect you so much depend upon for testimony of its Incorporiety Athanasius If this were true yet doubtless Brutes can have no knowledg of the Universality of that Species or universal Nature of Man viz. Humanity as abstracted from every degree of singularity But we have no reason to grant the Supposition for as Brutes doe not apprehend things abstracted but concrete as not Colour but a body coloured not a sapour but a body sapid c so ought we to conceive that there is nothing else in a Dog for instance but only the Memory of singulars or of those single men whom he hath seen and taken notice of and when he meets a man whom he hath not seen afore his phansy instantly presents him the image of some one he hath seen afore and so he takes him to be a man Nor can you recurr to that vulgar subterfuge that we are not so well acquainted with the nature of Beasts as to understand what is done in the secret cells of their brains and after what manner they apprehend objects seeing it is not difficult for us to inferr as much from their operations or external actings For in case they could aspire to so much perfection as to frame Universal Notions of things as we doe and reason upon them as we doe it were not to be doubted but it would come into their minds to enquire into the acts of their progenitors what they knew before them how they might signify to others at distance what themselves have thought and done and how they might devolve memorials to their posterity They would likewise attempt to frame Arts usefull in their lives and doe many noble actions of which it is impossible they should have the least hint or notice For as much therefore as no age can give us an Example of any such action done by any Beast whatever we may safely conclude that they have no notion of Universals as Rorarius and you from him seem to suppose So that this prerogative of Mans Understanding in framing Universals remains entire and untoucht and while it doth so I need not fear the stability of what I have founded thereupon viz that the. Human Intellect is Incorporeall And therefore if you have no more to object against this my reason I doubt not but Isodicastes will give his vote on my side Idosicastes I should be grossly partial Athanasius if I did not confess that you have foiled your adversary at this weapon yet I am sure Lucretius is so candid an Antagonist as to account it no dishonour to be overcome by Truth and I presume He doth contend only to make your conquest the more absolute Athanasius To these few Reasons of the Immateriality of the Human Soul desumed from the excellency of her operations I might here add a multitude of others of the same extraction and equivalent force as in particular that of the existence of Corporeal natures in the Soul by the power of apprehension that of her drawing from multitude to unity her apprehension of Negations and Privations her conteining of Contraries without opposition her capacity to move without being moved herself the incompossibility of opposite propositions in the understanding and sundry others the least whereof is of evidence and vigour sufficient to carry the cause against all those Enemies to her Immortality who would degrade her from the divine dignity of her nature to an equality with the souls of Beasts that are but certain dispositions of Matter and so obnoxious to dissolution upon change of the same by contrary agents But considering that the certainty of truth ought to be estimated rather by the weight than number of testimonies and that the discourses I have already
congenial Motives or incitements of the Soul are abstracted Considerations as hope of what is to come of Eternity Memory of what is past Virtue Honour and the like which arise not from material principles and have no commerce with Elementary compositions Now if the Understanding were not it self purely Immaterial it would be absolutely impossible for it ever so much as to suspect much lesse to know assuredly that there were any such things as Incorporeals in the Universe The Reason being obvious from that rule of Aristotle juxtim apparens prohibet alienum For as the eye when discoloured with a yellow humour in the jaundice can see no Object but it appears tincted with the same colour So could not the Intellect perceive any other but Corporeal Natures if it self were not only perfused with but wholly and intirely immersed into Corporiety so that of necessity it must be Incorporeal Lucretius Me thinks now you might with equal reason inferr the quite Contrary viz. that the Intellect could not have any perception of Corporeal Natures if it self were not likewise Corporeal there being required some kind of proportion and compossibility betwixt the Faculty percipient and the Object perceptible as is exemplified in each of the Senses which is the sole reason of their opinion who contend that the Sensitive part of the Soul is Material Athanasius I positively deny that Lucretius For since the Order or Degree of Incorporeal is superior to that of Corporeal thence it follows that by virtue of that its superiority or excellency it possesseth all the perfections of the inferior and that in a more eminent manner So that as the degree Animal being nobler than the degree meerly Vegetable doth in a more excellent proportion and manner comprehend Vegetation or Nutrition Accretion and Generation which are the functions of the Vegetable In like manner doth the degree Spiritual or Incorporeal being more noble and perfect than the meer Animal and Corporeal comprehend cognition Corporeal or Sensation and Imagination which are the functions proper to the degree Animal And thus you see that my inference of the Intellect's capacity to know Incorporeal essences from its own being a Spiritual Faculty is genuine and orderly but yours of its being Corporeal from its capacity to know Corporeals is false and preposterous Lucretius But may not I lawfully object that we do not conceive God or Angells or Intelligences as Immaterial Substances when we find in our selves that the mind doth alwaies speculate the Divine Essence it self under some Species of a Body and though not of a Human Body which yet is most usual yet of an aereal or ethereal one or somwhat more fine and subtile if any such there be Athanasius You may make this Objection there is no doubt but it will not be sufficient to prevail against what I have urged concerning the Intellect's extensibility even to God and other Intellectual essences For the understanding though it make use of those Phantasms that are proper to the Imagination as the means or degrees by which it mounteth it self up to a sublimity above all Corporeal species doth yet by ratiocination at length attain to that height as to be ascertained that beside all body of whatsoever thinness purity and subtility there is moreover a certain supereminent substance which hath nothing of Corporiety in it The Intellect I confess doth not positively or intuitively as they say know this Substance but since this is its condition while immersed in a body which doth as it were infect it with corporeal representations or Phantasms and eclipse its power of Intuition it is abundantly sufficient to our Conclusion that even in this mortal body it doth retein and conserve its incorporeal nature that it doth understand that substance Negatively or Abstractively For this investigation or search after God and our concluding him out of the force of contradiction or by way of Negation to be Eternal Infinite Omnipotent Omniscient Immutable with all other perfections imaginable essential to his nature doth clearly demonstrate that though the Intellect be obliged to make use of Corporeal images in order to its knowledge yet it is not obliged to acquiesce in them so as to enquire no further but hath such a liberty and energy as tht it doth ratiocinate beyond them and conclude that there is somewhat else in being which cannot be represented by any Corporeal Image or species and which though it cannot understand what it is in the fullness of its nature yet is it certain that such a nature there is and more than that is not required to justify my Assertion You may remember how Aristotle and other great Philosophers asserted the existence of Caelestial Intelligences Abstracted Movers and Immaterial Substances not that they could see them with the eye of the body or frame any Idea's of them in their Imagination but that by profound reasoning from the magnitude forme situation motion and duration of the Celestial bodies they came to understand that in nature there could not but be such Abstracted and Immaterial Movers which governed and continually regulated those vast and glorious Orbs in their Admirable and well ordered Motions Lucretius If what you say were true it would follow that in diseases of the brain and such as cause a depravation of the Phansy the Intellect as being more at liberty to exercise its faculty of pure and abstracted intellection would arise to the cognition of Immaterial things with more facility and promptness than at any other time But we daily see that men of disturbed Phansies and alienated minds as the vulgar phrase is are so far from understanding more clearly and distinctly than before that they cannot reason at all and it was not without cause that some Philosophers have held that a man deprived of any one of his senses can not rightly discourse of that sense or the objects belonging to it Athanasius You have no reason to urge this upon me for I formerly rejected that error of the Averrhoist that the Soul is a Forme meerly Assistent and in its functions altogether independent upon the body and what I averr is this that the soul of Man doth truely and intirely informe the body and to that purpose nature hath added senses and Imagination as handmaids to attend it in its operations and to give it opportunities of reasoning from what they bring in So that it ought not to seem strange that upon the loss of a sense or perturbation of the Phansy men cannot reason so exactly as before and it sufficeth that when the whole oeconomy of mans nature is in tune and order his understanding is capable of reasoning so as to advance itself above the body as far as is permitted to its nature and at length to conclude that there is somewhat Incorporeal And now I have recited all the Arguments which I thought most material towards the proof of the Soul's Immortality drawn from considerations Physical and in particular from the souls Operations and
they might be dissolved all exsolubility consisting wholly in Partibility And that Simple Natures are likewise incorruptible is manifest even from hence that the General and First Matter though Corporeal and produced from nothing by God at first doth persevere the very same for ever So that Dissolubility belonging neither to Incorporiety nor Simplicity it is purely consequent that the Soul which is an essence Incorporeal and Simple cannot be obnoxious to Dissolution And as to the Production of it though it be not easie for us especially at the first thought to conceive how an Incorporeal can be produced without perfect creation from which we have good cause to believe that God long since desisted yet that the Soul is produced we have the perswasion of sundry good reasons As if it were improduct or eternal à parte ante it would and must be so either as Coherent by it self and a substance sejoyned or severed from all other things or as a part adhaerent to another and deduced from that other when it is induced into the body But that it is not a substance cohaerent per se ab aeterno may be inferred from hence that there is remaining in us no memory of any such eternal state that the University of things would want beginning and so could have neither Author nor Governour which is monstrous and absurd as I have demonstrated in my Book against Atheism that if Men had been from all Eternity they must have been Infinite and so either there must have been an infinite multitude of Souls before all excogitable time or the same numerical Souls must have by transmigration been inservient to or informed successively not only many but infinite persons when yet it is repugnant that there should be an infinite number lest therein should be admitted as many Binaries Denaries Millenaries c. as Unities and so somthing be allowed more infinite than an infinite which is absurd And that our Souls were formerly in other men who lived before us we have no monument no record but those Fables of Pythagoras Empedocles and the like And that it is not a Particle desumed from another incorporeal is demonstrable from hence that an Incorporeal is uncapable of division into parts Which reason is so plain and obvious that I cannot but wonder that Plato having asserted God to be a Mind Divine and Incorporeal should neverthelesse contradict himself in affirming that Mans Soul was a Particle taken from the substance of God himself or how he could imagine the Soul to be Inexsoluble which he thought a part of an exsoluble nature Wherefore seeing the Soul cannot possibly be Improduct either of these two waies and certainly there can be no other it must of necessity be Product whatsoever the Manner of its Production be And here I might as I suppose you expect I should take occasion to engulph my self in that bottomlesse Sea of Difficulties concerning the Original and Extraduction of Mans Soul but being digressive from my present Theme and such whereof I am not yet able to give any other account than what you have met with in Sennertus Harvey and other modern Physicians who have more expresly addicted themselves to enquire into the mysteries of Generation I think it prudence to wave the opportunity Only thus much I may adventure to say and it is pertinent to my businesse in hand that the Production of the Soul cannot be from Matter because she is her self Immaterial nor from an Incorporeal by way of desumption or partition because Incorporiety and Divisibility are incompatible So that they are not altogether destitute of reason who conceive that it is produced ex Nihilo and by such a Cause whose power is immense and superior to all the Energy of of Nature which must be God the Author of Nature But however it is plain that though it hath its beginning and origine together with the body yet being Incorporeal it is not capable of perishing together with it as you would conclude And thus much for the First part of your Argument As for the Remainder of it to that Aristotle hath long since provided an Answer to my hand in the fourth Chapter of his first Book de Anima which is a Text very apposite and memorable however it either import a Contradiction in the Author himself or seem capable of their interpretation who alleage him as a defendant of the Mortality of the Soul and therefore I shall recite it Innasci autem Intellectus videtur substantia quaedam esse nec corrumpi nam si corrumperetur quidem id maximè fieret ab hebetatione illa quae in senectute contingit nunc autem res perinde fit ac in ipsismet sensuum instrumentis Si enim Senex oculum juvenilem reciperet non secus ac ipse juvenis videret Unde senectus non ex eo est quod quidquam passa Anima sit sed quod simile aliquid ac in ebrietate morbisque eveniat ipsaque intelligendi contemplandi functio propter aliquid aliud interius corruptum marcescit cum ipsum interim cujus est passionis expers maneat Which words considered we have good reason to afffirm that all that change which the Epicurean would have to be in the Rational Soul or Mind during the growth of the body in youth and decay of it in old age doth not proceed from any mutation in the Soul it self but in some other interior thing distinct from it as the Imagination or Organ of the Common Sense the Brain which being well or ill affected the Soul it self suffereth no whit at all but only the Functions of it flourish or decay accordingly For since the Intellect is enshrined in the body for only this end that it might collect the Knowledge of things by the intercession of the Phansy into which the images of things are conveyed through the Senses and that in order to its reasoning concerning them it might receive hints from those images which residing in the Phansy are therefore as we have said called Phantasms hence is it that the Soul in the beginning of its age or during Childhood doth reason but little because it hath then but few images or phantasms in store from which it might take occasion of composing discourses but in processe of time it comes to ratiocinate more copiously and perfectly as having then both more and more clear and ordinate Phantasms and lastly in decrepite old age it again falls to reason but little and brokenly because by reason of the drinesse of the brain the Phantasms are then either wholly or for the most part obliterated and those few that remain are represented both obscurely and perturbedly So that as Aristotle saith if it were possible to give an old man a young Eye and a young Imagination his Soul would soon declare by exquisite vision and quick reasoning that it was not she that had grown old but her Organs and that she is capable of no more change
speculate or understand without Phantasms and therefore it is not likely that the soul is a distinct substance and separable from the body For the ground hereof is false viz that there is no Intellection but what is either direct Imagination or done by Imagination as we have formerly proved and that with no sparing hand so that we need not here repeat it Nor had I here remembred this Argument of Aristotle but that this you now urge is very neer of kin thereunto as to its force and importance and so put me in mind of it afresh Lucretius An Eighth Objection may be made from hence that the Soul being once expired the body soon corrupts stinks and resolves to dust I say expired or like a vapour exhaled through the conduits and pores of the body and therefore so divided into small portions or particles as that in that very Egression or Expiration it must be wholly comparated to Dispersion and what is capable of such dispersion is capable of totall dissolution Athanasius You might well Lucretius have spared yourself and me the trouble of this impertinent objection had you thought my Answer to your Fifth worthy your memory For since you could not then deny that the soul as Incorporeal is diffused through the whole body and therefore may issue out of it intire and unimpaired as possessing no place and in that respect as capable of passing through the solid and compacted parts as through the conduits and pores why should you now resume that gross conception of the Souls expiring from the body like a vapour or exhalation And as for the Putrefaction of the Body after the Soul hath withdrawn itself from it though it nothing at all concern the buisiness in hand I say the Cause thereof is the defect of that vital Agitation of the Heart Blood and spirits by which the Humours most prone to putrifaction were partly kept from subsiding and fermenting and partly so extenuated as to be discussed and expelled Lucretius A Ninth from hence that in Lipothymies or swooning fits the vigour of the Soul is so much abated and brought low as that it would be totally dissolved and extinguished in case the Causes of those its Failings or Dejections were yet more violent as frequently they are and then they cause sudden death Athanasius Here you recur to the Symptomes of bodily Diseases again but I wish I could as easily remove them from the body as you from defending the Mortality of the Soul by any considerations drawn from them and their most fatal effects For as to Lipothymies which according to the Etymologie of the word you call Failings of the Soul they are in truth only Failings of the Heart or vital influence arising from the preclusion or stopping of those passages ordained for the continual transmission of vital Spirits which as servants the Soul makes use of to Life Sense and Motion And therefore reflecting upon what I have already said it is obvious to conceive that the whole Soul being diffused through the whole body all the failing in Swooning fits doth fall not upon her Self but upon the Vital Organs which at that time are rendred unfit for the uses and actions to which they were framed and accommodated And if the Causes of such Failings should chance to be so violent as to induce suddain death then the Soul indeed would and must wholly depart yet not by reason of any dissolution of its substance or exceeding imbecility in it self but only for want of those Dispositions in the Organs of life by which she was enabled to enliven the body And here I could mind you of a certain sort of Lypothymies that happen in Ecstasies of some Holy men when the Soul being transported with the superlative beauty and excellency of Divine Objects in abstracted contemplations doth so much neglect her inferior functions as that the body all that while seems senselesse and livelesse And yet this an argument rather of the strength of the Soul than of any Failing or Defection in it self I could also insist upon this that in sleep there is a kind of Defection of the influence of the Soul upon her corporeal Organs especially those inservient to Sense and Motion and yet the Soul is then most her self as Cyrus long since observed in one of Xenophons Orations in these most elegant words Dormientium Animi maximè declarant Divinitatem suam multa enim eum remissi ac liberi sunt futura prospiciunt ex quo intelligitur quales futuri sint cum se planè corporis vinculis relaxaverint But the Objection being otherwise refuted doth require neither Lucretius Experience teacheth that no man when dying findeth his Soul to depart out of his body whole and at once but rather to fail by degrees within his breast just as he doth his Sense in each proper Organ Which he would not do in case his Soul took her flight whole and intire out of his breast as a bird out of a Cage and therefore it is probable that the Soul being dissolved at the instant of death is breathed out in dispersed Atoms together with the Aer expired from the Lungs Athanasius You must needs be streightned for Objections Lucretius when you fly to uncertain Experiments and incompetent conceptions of vulgar heads and therefore I hope you cannot much longer hold out against truth I say to uncertain experiments because since it is impossible that any man in the extream moment of life wherein his Soul ceaseth to be either in his breast or any other part of his body should say to the standers by Now I am sensible of the egresse or flight of my Soul and I perceive how it departs because while he is able to speak or be sensible of any thing the Soul is still in the body and at the instant of its departure the Speech all Sense fail for ever The experience you alleage is uncertain and so no experience at all To incompetent Conceptions of vulgar heads because the common people not being able to understand the nature of an Incorporeal and how possessing no place no body can hinder its passage or trajection have a certain grosse apprehension that the Soul must issue out of the breast the same way that the breath doth out of the lungs And as for its Dispersion into Atoms you do ill to suppose it to be Corporeal when you have been so often beaten from that starting hole These Impertinences are much below so great a wit as yours Lucretius and I should very much wonder how you could fall upon them but that I ascribe it to your present humour of Contradiction which doth many times transport even wise men themselves to gross extravagancies Lucretius If the Soul were Immortal and conscious of its Immortality as you have affirmed certainly it would not grieve to leave the body which is rather its prison than delightful Mansion but rather rejoyce to be set at liberty and exult as a snake doth to