perpetually generated or made anew and that Aristotle held 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 life it self to subsist by respiration This you perhaps may judge to be but a faint and imperfect representation of the nature of a Sensitive Soul And therefore it is requisite I endevour to render it more lively by adding a few touches more concerning the Hypostasis or Subsistence of such a Soul the Life or Act and the principal Functions or Operations of it For the First of these three considerables viz. the Subsistence of a Sensitive Soul it seems not unreasonable to conceive that the Soul of a Brute doth consist of the very same Matter of which the organical Body is formed but of such particles of it as are select most subtile and active in the highest degree Which as the flower of the whole matter in the formation of the Embrion emerging out of the grosser mass and mutually uniting first force passages convenient for themselves through the whole compage of the Body and then constitute one continued thin and as it were spirituous Hypostasis adequate and coextense to the same For so soon as any matter is disposed towards animation by the law of the Creation not by Epicurus's fortuitous concurse of Atoms the Soul at the same time which is called the Form and the Body which is called the Matter begin to be formed together under a certain species according to the modell or Character impressed upon them When the more agile and spirituous particles of the seminal matter having freed themselves from the other parts of it quickly assemble together and by little and little raising a commotion stir up and agitate the grosser particles and by degrees dispose them into fit postures and places where they ought to remain and cohere and so form the body according to the figure or shape preordained by the Creator Mean while this congregation of subtile and active Particles or the Soul which by expansion enlargeth it self and insinuating her particles among others more gross and as it were interweaving them frames the body is it self exactly conformed to the figure and dimensions of the same body coextended and adapted to it as to a case or sheath doth actuate enliven and inspire all and all parts thereof While on the other side the same Soul apt and prone of it self to be dissolved and vanish into aer is by the Body containing it conserved in its act and subsistence Now according to this notion a Sensitive Soul may be conceived to be a most subtle body contained in a gross one and in all points of the same Figure with it or as it were a Spectre made up of exhalations such as some vain or superstitious heads have somtimes imagined to ascend from and hover over the graves of the dead and called them Ghosts For arising together with the body out of the material principles of Generation rightly disposed it doth as well as the body receive its determinate subsistence conform to the idea or Type consigned to it by the Law of Nature But though the same be intimately united to the body and every where closely intertexd with all parts of it as the warp and woof are interwoven in cloth yet so fine and subtle are the threads of which it doth consist that it cannot possibly by our senses be discerned nor indeed be known otherwise than by its own Effects and Operations Moreover when by any violence done either to itself or its Copartner the Body the life of this Soul is destroyed instantly the particles of which it was composed their mutual cohesion being dissolved disperse themselves and fly away not leaving any the least print or mark of their late subsistence and the Body now destitute of its conserving inmate the Soul speedily tends to corruption which sooner or later according to the less or greater compactness of the parts of the body dissolves that likewise into its first Principles or Elements For the Second it is not obscure that the Existence of this Corporeal Soul depends intirely upon the Act or Life of it and in this very respect seems exactly like to common Flame and to that alone inasmuch as the substance of both ceases to be in the very instant it ceaseth from Motion wherein the very life of both doth consist nor can either of the two be by any means whatever redintegrated so as to be numerically the same thing it was From whence it seems a genuine consequence that the Essence or Being of a Sensitive Soul hath its beginning wholly from life as from the accension or kindling of a certain subtile and inflammable matter To render this yet more plain when in the Genital matter swarms of active and spirituous chiefly Sulphureous particles predisposed to animation have met with a less number of Saline particles in a convenient focus being as it were kindled sometimes by another Soul as in all Vivaparous Animals viz. of the Generant somtimes by their own rapid motion as it happens in Oviparous they conceive life or break forth into a kind of flame which thenceforth continues to burn so long as it is constantly fed with sulphureous fewel from within and nitrous from without but instantly perisheth when either through defect of such aliment or violence from external agents it comes once to be extinct This Act of the Corporeal Soul or enkindling of the vital matter is in more perfect Animals such as are furnished with hot blood so manifestly accompanied with great heat fuliginous exhalations and other effects of fire or flame that it is difficult for even the most Sceptical person in the World to doubt that the blood is really in a continual burning and that life is rather Flame it self than only like it But in other Animals less perfect and endowed with blood less hot though we cannot say their Soul is properly Flame yet we may say it is somwhat very like it namely a swarm of most subtile active and as it were fiery particles or a spirituous Halitus which included in the body doth move and agitate the denser mass thereof and inspire the whole and actuate all the members and in some with admirable agility even beyond that of more perfect Animals as may be observed in some Reptils and Insects And that even in these there is a fiery vigor or force constantly acting may naturaly be inferred from hence that while they remain not unactive and drowsy as in winter usually they do they can no more want the aliments of life a perpetual supply of blood and aer than Animals of a hotter constitution as we shall soon declare * As for the Third and last considerable viz. the Faculties and Operations of a Corporeal or Sensitive Soul I shall only in the general observe that so soon as she begin's actually to exist she first frames for herself a convenient seat wherein to reside the body and then organizeth the same body making it according to the
and confused with delusory whimzies as it too frequently happens to Men in Hypochondriacal Melancholy and madness and likewise in drunken fits And as for the various Gestures of the Soul by which respectively to the various impressions of sensible objects she expresseth one while Gladness and Pleasure another Aversion and Offence it is worthy our observation that sometimes she is allured outwardly into the organ of some one of the senses and that she occasionaly crowds herself into the Eye Ear Palate or other instrument of sense there more neerly to approach and entertain the pleasing object somtimes on the contrary to avoid an Evil she apprehends and decline an encontre with an ingratefull object she retreats inwardly and leaving her watches shrinks up herself as if she labourd to hide her head from the danger threatned So that we can scarcely perceive or imagine any thing without disquiet and commotion and at the apprehension of almost any object whatsoever the whole Soul is moved and put into a trembling and the substance of it variously agitated as a field of corn is waved to and fro by contrary gusts of winds Nor do these agitations especially if they be any whit violent stop at the Sensitive part of the Soul or spirits Animal which I imagine to make a kind of lucid Fluidum subject to Undulations or waving motions throughout upon either external or internal impulses but as waves rowl on till they arrive at the shore are carried on by an Undulating motion even to the Vital part glowing in the blood and impelling the flame thereof hither and thither make it to burn unequaly For so soon as an object is either by the sense or by the Memory represented to the Imagination under th' apparence of Good or Evil in the very same instant it affects and commoves the Animal Spirits destined to maintain the Pulse of the heart and by their influx causing the heart to be variously contracted or dilated consequently renders the motion and accension of the blood variously irregular and unequal And thus you see in what manner the two parts of the Sensitive Soul the Vital flame and the Animal spirits reciprocally affect each other with their accidental alterations But this you may understand more clearly and fully from the following Theory of the Passions where we shall enquire into the reasons and motions of them more particularly Mean while I find my self in this place arrested by a certain mighty Difficulty which though perhaps I shall not be able to overcome ought nevertheless to be attempted not only for its own grand importance but because without some plausible Explication of it at least all our precedent speculations concerning the nature and proprieties of a Sensitive Soul will fall to the ground as an arch that wants a key or middle-stone to support all the rest It is concerning the Knowledge of Brutes by which they are directed in actions voluntary For supposing all we have hitherto been discoursing of the Origin Substance Subsistence Parts Faculties Inclinations Passions and Alterations of a Corporeal Soul to be true and evident which is more than I dare assume yet doth it not from thence appear what such a Soul can by her own proper virtue do more than a Machine artificialy fram'd and put into motion To speak more plainly tho it be granted that first th' impression made by an external object upon the instrument of sense doth by impelling the Animal Spirits inwards and by disposing them into a certain peculiar figure or mode as the Cartesians speak cause the act of Sensation or simple Perception and that then the same spirits rebounding as it were by a reflex undulation outward from the brain into the nerves and muscles produce local motions granting this I say yet still we are to seek How this Soul or any one part of it comes to be conscious of Sensation or how it can by a reflex act as the Schools phrase it perceive that it doth perceive and according to that perception is impell'd to diverse acts directed to an appetite of this or that good and somtimes in prosecution of the good desired to perform actions that seem to be the results of counsel and deliberation such as are daily observed to be done by several sorts of Beasts as well wild as domestic In Man indeed it seems not difficult to conceive that the Rational Soul as president of all thâ—inferiour faculties and constantly speculating the impressions or images represented to her by the Sensitive as by a mirrour doth first form to herself conceptions and notions correspondent to their nature and then proceed to acts of reason judgement and will But as for Brutes that are irrational in what manner the perception distinction appetite memory of objects and other acts resulting from an inferior kind of reason are in them performd this I confess is more than I can yet understand Some there are I know who rather then acknowledge their insufficiency to solve this Problem have attributed to Brutes also Souls immaterial and subsistent after separation from their bodies But these considered not that the Soul of a Brute however docil and apprehensive and using organs in their structure very little if at all different from those in the head of Man can yet have no capacity of Arts and Sciences nor raise it self up to any objects or acts but what are Material and that by consequence the same is different from and inferiour to the Rational Soul of Man and material So that instead of solving the Doubt by teaching us how from a certain Modification of subtil matter there may result such Power which residing in the brain of a Brute may there receive without confusion all impressions or images brought in by the Senses distinctly speculate judge and know them and then raise appetites and imploy the other faculties in acts respective to that knowledge and to those appetites instead of this I say they have entangled themselves in an absurd Error ascribing to a thing meerly material a capacity of knowing objects immaterial and performing actions proper only to immaterial Beings We are therefore to search for this Power of a Sensitive Soul by which she is conscious of her own perception only in Matter in a peculiar manner so or so disposed or modified But in what matter this of the Soul or that of the Body Truely if you shall distinctly examine either the Soul or the Body of a Brute as not conjoyned and united into one Compositum you will have a hard task of it to find in either of them or indeed in any other material subject whatever any thing to which you may reasonably attribute such an Energetic and self-moving Power But if you consider the whole Brute as a Body animated and by divine art of an infinite wisdom designed framed and qualified for certain ends and uses then you may safely conclude that a Brute is by the law of the Creation or institute of Almighty
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PASSIONS Mihi crede qui nihil agere videntur Majora agunt humana divinaque simul tractant Seneca Epist. 8. In the SAVOY Printed by T. N. for Iames Magnes in Russell-Street near the Piazza in Convent-Garden 1674. EPISTLE PREFATORY To a Person of Honor Friend to the Author 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exercetur ad virtutem in solitudine anima was the the saying of a Bragman or Indian Philosopher to Alexander the the Great and how memorable it is you may perhaps collect from this diversion For the imperfect Discourse I herewith send to you my dear Friend concerning the PASSIONS is the product of my late ten weeks solitude in the Country Where being remote from my Library and wanting conversation with Learned Men I knew not how more innocently to shorten the winter evenings than by spending them in revising some Philosophical papers of my own wherein among other things I had formerly out of the best Authors made certain Collections concerning the divine art of acquiring constant Tranquillity of Mind by Wisedom or the right use of Reason And of this serious Diversion I then made choice both because I well understood the best part of Human Science to be that which teacheth us how to moderate our Affections to the deceiptfull and transitory things of this life and so to regulate our Actions as to reap from them whatever their Events may be the happy fruit of internal Acquiescence and Satisfaction and because my accumulated Misfortunes had at that time reduced me to a necessity of consulting that part of Philosophy about the most effectual Remedies against Discontent In this state and resolution then first I remembred that Nature hath made Man subject to no other real Evil but only pain of the Body all Grief or pain of the Mind though many times more sharp and intollerable being created by our own false Opinion that we stand in want of things that are in truth without the circle of ourselves and therefore not absolutely necessary to our wel-being Then I considered that most commonly false Opinions are occasioned and so exorbitant Desires suggested to us by our Passions upon which all the Good and Evil incident to us in this life seem's to depend as Ioy and Grief are the two points in which all Human actions end For though it be undoubtedly true that the Reasonable Soul hath her intellectual Delights and Disquiets apart such as are proper to her simple and spiritual nature yet is it no less true that those other Delights and Disquiets that are common to her with the Body depend intirely upon the Affections Which when regular that is moderated and directed by reason are indeed of good use to the Soul in that they serve to incite her to desire such objects which she well know's to be pleasant and beneficial to her and to persist in that desire but when irregular by representing as realy good things that are so only in apparence provoke her to erroneous Desires and in persuit of them to Actions also repugnant to the dictates of right Reason and consequently to peace and tranquility of Mind From these Cogitations it was not difficult for me to infer that the whole art of attaining unto that internal serenity after which I was seeking consisteth principaly in Directing our Desires aright that is to things which we clearly and distinctly know to be realy Good and that the only way so to direct our Desires is to imploy our Understanding or Faculty of Discerning which God hath to that end given us strictly and attentively to examine and consider the goodness of things recommended to us by our Passions before we determin our Will to affect and persue them For most certain it is that as our faculty of Discerning that is our Intellect cannot naturaly tend to falsity so neither can our faculty of Assenting that is our Will be deceived when it is determined only upon objects which we clearly and distinctly understand and where our Will is not misplaced there can be no just cause of Perturbation of mind Being soon convinced of this no less evident than important verity in the next place I considered that if our inordinate Affections be the bitter fountain from whence the greatest part of if not all our practical Errors and by consequence most of the Evils we suffer flow and if as the diseases of the Body so likewise those of the Mind may be more easily cured when their nature and causes are understood then would it be requisite for me first to inquire as far as I should be able into the nature causes motions c. of the Passions before I proceeded further in my research after the most powerfull Remedies against their Excesses To this inquiry therefore I diligently applied myself both by reading and meditation by Reading that I might recall into my memory what I had long before transcribed out of the books of such Authors who had written judiciously and laudably of the Passions by Meditation that I might examin the weight of what I read by comparing it with what I daily observed within the theatre of my own breast every Man living being naturaly so sensible of the various Commotions hapning in various Passions especialy more violent ones that some have held the knowledge of their nature and causes may be without much of difficulty derived from thence alone without any help from foreign observations And while I proceeded in this course I digested my Collections and private Sentiments into such an order or Method which seem'd to me most convenient aswell to show their genuin succession and mutual dependence as to make the Antecedents support the Consequents and both to illustrate each other reciprocaly I put them also into a dress of Language so plain and familiar as may alone evince my design was to write of this Argument neither as an Orator nor as a Moral Philosopher but only as a Natural one conversant in Pathology and that too more for his own private satisfaction than the instruction of others And thus have I succinctly acquainted you with the Occasion Subject Scope and Stile of the Treatise that accompanieth this Epistle But this Noble Sir is not all whereof I ought to advertise you before you come to open the Treatise itself There remain yet two or three things more which it imports me to offer to your notice as Preparatives against prejudice ONE is that if in the preliminary part of the Discourse where it was necessary for me to investigate the Subjectum Primarium of the Passions I have declared my assent to their opinion who hold that in every individual Man there are two distinct Souls coexistent conjoined and cooperating one only Rational by which he is made a Reasonable creature the other Sensitive by virtue whereof he participateth also of Life and Sense I did so chiefly for these two reasons First it seem'd to me unintelligible how an Agent incorporeal but not infinite
such as the Rational Soul by her excellent faculties and proper acts appear's to be can act physicaly in and upon a gross and ponderous body such as ours are immediately or without the mediation of a third thing which though corporeal too may yet be of a substance so refined and subtil as to approach somwhat neerer to the nature of a pure Spirit than the body itself doth and therefore for the more probable explication of the Phenomena of the Passions which are not raised in the Rational Soul I found myself obliged to admit her to have a Sensitive one conjoyned with her to receive her immediate suggestions and to actuate the body according to her soveraign will and pleasure there being less of disparity betwixt the most thin and subtil bodies of Light and Flame whereof many eminent Philosophers have conceived a Sensitive Soul to consist and a substance purely Spiritual than between a pure spirit and a gross heavy body as ours is Secondly it seem'd to me no less unconceivable whence that dismal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or intestin war which every Man too frequently feels within himself and whereof even St. Paul himself so sadly complained when in Epist. ad Roman cap. 3. he cries out video aliam legem in membris meis repugnantem legi mentis meae should arise if not from a Duumvirate as it were of Rulers contending for superiority within us and inclining us two contrary ways at once For to conceive that one and the. same Simple thing such as the Reasonable Soul is rightly presumed to be can be repugnant to itself or at one and the same time be possessed with opposite affections is manifestly absurd There are indeed who to evade this absurdity imagine it possible that of one and the same Rational simple Soul there may be two distinct Faculties or powers opposite each to other from whose clashings and contrary inclinations this civil war may proceed But to oblige us to swallow this palpable contradiction these Men ought to have reconciled those two repugnant notions of Simple and Compound and to have told us why in the same simple substance of fire there cannot likewise be two mutualy repugnant faculties heat and cold In a Mixed body there may be I confess opposite faculties and therefore the like may be imagined also in the Rational Soul if she be conceived to be of a mixed or compound nature but this is against their own supposition and destructive to the natural immortality of the Soul What then can remain to cause this dire war daily observed within us betwixt the allurements of our Sense on one side and the grave dictates of our Mind on the other but two distinct Agents the Rational Soul and the Sensitive coexistent within us and hotly contending about the conduct of our Will But You Sir will perhaps tell me there may another and that a more probable cause be given of this hostility and that the searching wit of Monsieur des Cartes hath been so happy to discover what it is in libr. de Passion part 1. art 47. where he thus reasoneth In no other thing saith he but in the repugnancy that is between the motions which the Body by its spirits and those which the Soul by her will do at the same time endeavour to excite in the Glandula Pinealis in the brain consist all the Conflicts which Men commonly imagin betwixt the inferior part of the Soul which is named the Sensitive and the Superior which is called the Rational or betwixt the appetites natural and the will For in us there is only one Soul which hath in her no variety of parts the same that is Sensitive is also Rational and all the appetites thereof are volitions The Error by which divers persons as it were that are for the most part mutualy contrary come to be imposed upon her hath proceeded only from hence that hitherto her functions have not been sufficiently distinguished from the functions of the Body to which alone is to be ascribed all that can be observed in us to be repugnant to our reason So that here is no other Contrast but that when the Glandule seated in the middle of the brain is impell'd on one part by the Soul and on the other by the Spirits Animal which are nothing but bodies as I have before declared it often happens that those two impulses or impressions are contrary each to other and that the strongger hindereth the effect of the weaker Now there may be distinguished two kinds of motions excited in the Glandule by the spirits some represent to the Soul objects that move the Senses or impressions found in the brain and use no force upon the will others use force namely those that make the Passions or the motions of the body that accompany them And as for the first though they often hinder the actions of the Soul or be hindered by them yet because they are not directly contrary there is no strife or contention observed in them but only betwixt the last and the Wills that are repugnant to them for Example betwixt the endeavour by which the spirits impell the Glandule to induce upon the Soul a desire of some one thing and that by which the Soul repells the same Glandule by her will to avoid it And this chiefly demonstrateth this strife that since the will hath not power as hath been already shown to excite Passions directly the Soul is therefore compell'd to use art and to apply herself to the consideration of various things successively Whence if it happen that any one of those various things hath the force of changing for a moment the cours of the spirits it may so fall out that the next thing that occurs to be considered may want the like force and the spirits may resume their former cours because the precedent disposition in the nerves in the heart and in the blood hath not been changed whereby it comes to pass that the Soul almost in the same moment feels herself impell'd to desire and decline the same thing And this hath given Men occasion of imagining in the Soul two powers mutualy repugnant But yet there may be conceived a certain Conflict in this that oftentimes the same cause that exciteth some Passion in the Soul exciteth also in the Body some certain motions whereunto the Soul contributeth nothing at all and which she stops or endevours to stop so soon as she observes them as is manifest from experience when that which exciteth Fear causeth also the spirits to flow into the Muscles that serve to move the leggs to flight and occasioneth the will of exercising Courage to stop them To this Objection therefore I answer 1. that had this excellent Man Monsieur des Cartes been but half as conversant in Anatomy as he seems to have been in Geometry doubtles he would never have lodged so noble a guest as the Rational Soul in so incommodious a closet of the brain as the
in the Genital parts and is possess'd with an earnest longing to transmit the same into a place most commodious for its accension into new Souls For as it is by natural instinct that every living creature is from its very â—irth directed to choose food most agreeable to its nature and daily to feed thereupon aswell that the grosser web of the body may from thence by insensible addition and assimilation of new parts be augmented more and more until it attain to due magnitude or perfection of stature as that the finer intertexture of the Soul may be by continualy repeted supplies of Spirits rendred equal and coextense to the body and inabled to execute all her functions vigorously and effectualy So it is also from the same natural instinct that when by that gradual amplification of all lineaments of both body and Soul the living creature hath at length arrived at its full strength and growth the Animal Spirits then begin to abound and swarm in greater multitudes than is necessary to the uses of th' individual and the luxuriant or superfluous troops of them together with a certain refined and generous Humor derived from the whole body are daily transferr'd into the Genitals natures both Laboratory and Magazin for propagation of the Species there to be further prepared and formed into the Idea of an Animal exactly like to the first Generant which afterwards is in the amorous congress of male and femal transmitted into the womb therein to receive its accomplishment Having thus lightly described the principal Faculties and innate Dispositions of a Sensitive Soul as also the fundamental laws of her Oeconomy it remains only that we consider the various Mutations and irregular Commotions to which she is liable That the Corporeal Soul while as a Flame burning within her organical body she on every side diffuseth heat and light is herself subject to various Tremblings noddings Eclipses inequalities and disorderly Commotions as all Flame is observed to be this I say is not obscurely discernable in the Effects of those alterations which happen chiefly in her more violent Passions though indeed not so clearly and distinctly discernable in Brutes as in Men in respect they are subject to fewer passions than Man is and want the faculty of speech to express any one of those few they feel in themselves Wherefore that we may in some order briefly recount the most remarkable at least of these turbulent Affections incident to the Sensitive Soul we shall shew what Alterations she may suffer 1 from her own proper Passions 2 from the temperament and diseases of the Body 3 from various impressions of sensible Objects and 4 from exorbitant motions of the Animal Spirits Most certain it is that the Flame of the Soul doth not always burn equaly or at one constant rate but now more now less sometimes briskly and clearly sometimes dully and dimly For it is not only enlarged or contracted according as the fewel brought to feed it is more or less in quantity and more or less sulphureous in quality but the very accension of it in the heart though of itself moderate and equal is yet sometimes so varied by the fannings as it were of the Passions that one while it blazeth up to a dangerous excess as it usualy happens in great Anger and Indignation another while it is in danger of being blown out by suddain and surprizing Ioy or almost suffocated by unexpected Terror or astonishing Grief The like may be said of the rest of the Passions or strong Affects by whose various motions the Flame of life like the flame of a candle exposed to the winds is variously agitated and changed as will more clearly appear from our ensuing discourse of the Passions in particular Nor is it from the suddain puffs or impulses of Passions alone that such immutations and inequalities as these proceed Sometimes it comes to pass that the Vital Flame by slow degrees and as it were Hecticaly diminished becomes little pale faint and half-extinct as may be observed in colder temperaments in Leucophlegmatic bodies in Hydropic persons in Virgins troubled with the Green-sickness and other the like chronic diseases In which the blood being more serous or watery than it ought to be yields but little flame and that too inconstant and beclouded with fume and vapour like that which ariseth from wet and green wood On the contrary it somtimes happens that the blood being immoderately sulphureous is almost wholly put into a conflagration as is frequently observed in Choleric constitutions and feverish distempers and great debauches with Wine And as by these and such like disorders of the blood the accension of the Vital Flame is with respective variety altered so likewise do the Lucid particles that arise to the brain from thence and constitute the beamy web of Animal Spirits become more or less luminous and regular or irregular in their motions For instance From the diminished or restrained accension of the blood the sphere of the Sensitive Soul is contracted into less compass than that of the body and reduced to such narrowness that it cannot re-expand itself so as to illustrate all the brain and actuate the whole contexture of the nerves with requisite brightness and vigour And on the other side when the flame of life is much intended or increased provided it blaze not to the hight of a fever then the whole system of Animal spirits thence deradiated being proportionably augmented swells to an expansion beyond the limits of the body insomuch that a Man transported and exuâ—â—ing for great Ioy or puffed up with Pride seems to be inflated above measure and hardly able to contain himself within the modest bounds of his own dimensions Besides these Alterations which the Sensitive or Lucid part of the Soul suffers from the various changes of the Vital there are others and those very many which it receives immediately both from affections of the Brain and Nerves and from External objects making impressions thereupon which perturb the consistence and usual order of its parts For example at night the Brain itself from a too plentifull infusion of the Nutrive liquor as from a gloomy cloud overcast seems replete with vapours so that in sleep the Lucid part of the Soul is wholly obscured and envellopped as it were with darkness Nor is it rare to have Eclipses of one or more of the Faculties Animal meerly from some morbisic matter or gross humor fixed somwhere in the brain and obstructing the ways of the Animal spirits Somtimes these Animal spirits are not themselves sufficieiently pure clear and bright but infected and beclouded with incongruous steams saline vitriolic nitrous and other the like darksom exhalations which deform the images of things drawn in the brain change them into false and chimerical representations and raise exorbitant motions of the spirits Whence it somtimes comes to pass that the whole Soul undergoes various metamorphoses and is invested in strange apparitions
God so comparated as that from Soul and body united such a confluence of Faculties should result as are necessary to the ends and uses for which it was made Do but convert your thoughts awhile upon Mechanic Engines and seriously contemplate the motions powers and effects of them They are all composed indeed of gross solid and ponderous Materials and yet such is the design contrivance and artifice of their various parts as that from the figures and motions of them there result certain and constant operations answerable to the intent of the Artist and far transcending the forces of their divided ingredients Before the invention of Clocks and Watches who could expect that of iron and brass dull and heavy metalls a machine should be framed which consisting of a few wheels endented and a spring regularly disposed should in its motions rival the celestial orbs and without the help or direction of any external Mover by repeted revolutions measure the successive spaces of time even to minutes and seconds as exactly almost as the diurnal revolutions of the Terrestrial globe itself and yet now such Machins are commonly made even by some Blacksmiths and mens admiration of their pretty artifice long since ceased If then in vulgar Mechanics the contrivance and advantagious disposition of matter be more noble and efficacious than matter itself certainly in a Living Creature in a Body animate the Powers emergent from a conspiracy and cooperation of so many so various organs and all so admirably formed ought to be acknowledged incomparably more noble and more Energetic If the art of Man weak and ignorant Man can give to bodies of themselves weighty sluggish and unactive figure connexion and motion fit to produce effects beyond the capacity of their single natures what ought we to think of the divine art of the Creator whose Power is infinite because his wisedom is so Could not He think you who by the voice of his Will call'd the World out of Chaos and made so many myriads of different Beings out of one and the same universal matter could not He when He created Brutes so fashion and organize the various parts and members of their Bodies thereto so adjust the finer and more active contexture of their spirituous Souls and impress such motions upon them as that from the union and cooperation of both a Syndrome or conspiracy of Faculties or Powers should arise by which they might be qualified and inabled to live move and act respectively to the proper uses and ends of their Creation Undoubtedly He could and t is part of my belief that He did Nor do I more wonder at the Knowledge of Beasts by which they are directed in the election of objects and in the prosecution or avoidance of them than I do at their simple Perception of them by their outward senses since I conceive the one to be as much Mechanical as the other though perhaps the reason of the one is of more difficult explication than that of the other When you hear the Musick of a Church Organ is it not as pleasant to your mind as the Musick is to your ear to consider how so many grateful notes and consonances that compose the charming Harmony do all arise only from wind blown into a set of pipes gradualy different in length and bore and successively let into them by the apertures of their valves and do you not then observe the Effect of this so artificial instrument highly to excell both the Materials of it and the hand of the Organist that plaies upon it the like Harmony you have perhaps somtimes heard from a Musical Water-work as the vulgar calls it an Organ that plaied of itself without the hands of a Musician to press the jacks meerly by the force of a stream of Water opening and shuting the valves alternately and in an order predesign'd to produce the harmonical sounds consonances and modes requisite to the composition to which it had been set Now to the first of these Organs you may compare a Man in whom the Rational Soul seems to perform the office of the Organist while governing and directing the Animal Spirits in all their motions she disposeth and ordereth all Faculties of the inferior or Sensitive Soul according to her will and pleasure and so makes a kind of Harmony of Reason Sense and Motion And to the Other or Hydraulic Organ you may compare a Brute whose Sensitive Soul being scarcely moderatrix of of herself and her Faculties doth indeed in order to certain ends necessary to her nature perform many trains of actions but such as are like the various parts of an Harmonical Composition regularly prescribed as the notes of a Tune are prickd down by the law of her creation and determined for the most part to the same thing viz. the Conservation of herself So that she seems to produce an Harmony of Life Sense and Motion But this Analogy seems to be much greater in Brutes of the lowest order such upon whose Souls or natures there are not many Types or Notes of actions to be done by them imprinted and which according to that common saying of the Schools non tam agunt quà m aguntur act rather by necessary impulse or constraint than freely and of their own accord than in more perfect Animals whose actions are ordained to more and more considerable uses and upon whose Souls therefore more original lessons are as it were prick'd down and to which we cannot justly deny a power of both varying those innate prints and compounding them one with another occasionaly Which Power seems to be radicated in the Corporeal Soul by nature so constituted as to be knowing and active in some certain things necessary to it and capable also of being afterward taught by various accidents usually affecting it both to know other things and to do far more and more intricate actions All the Knowledge therefore these more perfect Brutes are observed to have must be either Innate or Adventitious The Former is commonly nam'd Natural Instinct which being by the Omnipotent Creator in the very act of their Formation infused and as an indelible Character impress'd upon their very principles or natures both urges them to and directs them in certain actions necessary to the prorogation of their life and to the propagation of their kind The Other is by little and little acquired by the daily perception of new objects by imitation by experience by mans teaching and by some other waies and in some Brutes is advanced to a higher degree than in others Nevertheless this same acquired cognition and Cunning also how great soever doth in some of them depend altogether upon instinct natural and the frequent use of it Here it would not perhaps be very difficult for me to recount what sorts of actions done by more perfect Beasts are referrible to their Congenite Knowledge alone what to their acquired alone and what to a combination of both I could also shew how their
and actuate the body betwixt whose nature and her own there is great disparity 2 As for that nice and amusing doctrine of the School-men that in Man the Sensitive Soul is eminently contained in and to use their very term as it were absorpt by the Rational so that what is a Soul in Brutes becomes a mere Power or quality in Man this I think as many other of their superfine distinctions doe sounds like nothing put into hard words For how can it be imagined possible the eternal law of nature should be so far violated as that a substance should be changed into an accident that the Sensitive Soul which is Corporeal and extense and which they themselves allow to be actually existent in the body before the infusion of the Rational should upon accession of the Rational lose its former essence and degenerate into a naked Quality This is I profess a Mystery much above my comprehension 3 If it be affirmed that the Rational Soul doth at her entrance into the body introduce life also and sense and so there is no need of any other principle of life and sense where she is then must it be granted that Man doth not generate a Man animated or endowed with life and sense but only an inform body or rude mass of flesh And how absurd that would be I leave to your judgement These Reasons discovering the improbability of the first Assumption what can remain to hinder us from embracing the OTHER viz. that there are in every individual Man two distinct Souls coexistent and conjoin'd one by which he is made a Reasonable creature another by which he becomes also a living and Sensitive one Especially since the truth of this seems sufficiently evident even from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or civil war too frequently hapning betwixt these twins which every Man sometimes feels in his own breast and whereof the holy Apostle himself so sadly complain'd For this intestine War seeing it cannot arise from one and the same thing possessed with affections mutually repugnant and inclining us two contrary waies at once argues a Duumvirate of Rulers reciprocaly clashing and contending for superiority and such too that are as remote in their natures as different in the modes of their subsistence Upon this War depend all the Passions by which the restless Mind of Man is so variously and many times also violently agitated to his almost perpetual disquiet and vexation and upon the success of it depends all the happiness or misery of not only his present life but that which is to come To enquire therefore awhile into the grounds and reasons of this fatal discord will be neither loss of time nor digression from our purpose That Man then is endowed as with two distinct faculties of Knowing viz. Vnderstanding and Imagination that proper to his Rational this to his Sensitive soul so likewise with a twofold Appetite viz. Will which proceeding from his Intellect is immediate attendant of the Rational soul and appetite Sensitive which cohering to the Imagination is as it were the factor or procurer to the Corporeal Soul is the common doctrine of Plato and Aristotle to this day read and asserted in the Schools nor ought it to be rejected But then it must not be so understood as if the Rational soul herself which seems to be immaterial and consequently exempt from passion were upon every appulse of good or evil objects subject to all the turbulent affections of desire or aversation for this would be manifestly repugnant to the excellency of her spiritual nature and inconsistent with her dignity and superintendency over the inferiour powers Affections she hath indeed of her own such as are competent and proper to her semidivine Essence It is not to be doubted but that in the contemplation of true and good and chiefly of what is supremely both true and good the Deity as likewise in works of beneficence in the cognition of things by their causes in the exercises of her habits aswell the contemplative as the practical and in all other her proper acts the Reasonable Soul feels in herself a very great Complacency as on the contrary the want of these doth affect her with as great Displeasure Nor is it to be doubted but our love of God and all other real goods and our detestation of vices and vicious Men as also all other pure and simple affects arising and continuing without perturbation or disquiet belong only to the Reasonable Soul which to use the elegant simile of Plato seated in a higher sphere of impassibility like the top of mount Olympus enjoys perpetual serenity looking down the while upon all tumults commotions and disorders hapning in the inferior part of man as that doth upon the clouds winds thunders and other tempests raised in the air below it But as for all vehement affections or perturbations of the Mind by which it is usualy commoved and inclined to this or that side for prosecution of good or avoidance of evil these certainly ought all to be ascribed to the Corporeal Soul and seem to have their original in the seat of th' Imagination probably the middle of the brain Nevertheless for that the Intellect as it reviews all Phantasms formed by imagination and at pleasure regulates and disposes them so it not only perceives all concupiscences and tempests of passions used to be stirr'd up in the imagination but also while it freely exerciseth its native power and jurisdiction moderates governs and gives law to them for these reasons when the Rational Soul approves some and rejects others raiseth some and composes others of those passions and directs them to right ends she may also be said by such her dictates to exercise acts of Will as Arbiter and to will or nill those things which the Sensitive Appetite desires or abhors by her permission or command But yet this empire of the Rational Soul is not so absolute over the Sensitive when this proceeds to Appetite as when it is imployed about the discernment and Knowledge of sensible objects For the Sensitive being much neerer allied to the body and immediate Guardian thereof is by that affinity and relation obliged to addict itself altogether to the gratification welfare and conservation of the same And that this province may be more gratefull and agreeable to so delicate a Governess she is continualy courted and presented by all the Senses with variety of blandishments and tempting delights So that charmed by those powerful enchantments of sensible objects and intirely taken up with care of the body and in that respect prone to pursue pleasures she too often proves deaf to the voice of Reason advising the contrary and refuses to be diverted from her sensual to nobler affections Yea somtimes grown weary of subjection she takes occasion to cast off her yoke of allegiance and like a proud and insolent Rebell aspires to unbounded license and dominion And then then it is we feel those Twins
strugling within us that intestine war betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit that dire conflict of the Sensitive Appetite with Reason which distracts one Man into two Duellists and which ceaseth not till one of the Combatants hath overcome and brought the other to submission And what is yet more deplorable the event of this combat is often so unhappy that the nobler part is subdued and led captive by the ignoble the forces of sensual allurements then proving too strong for all the guards of Reason though assisted by the auxiliary troops of Moral precepts and the sacred institutes of Religion When the divine Politie of the Rational Soul being subverted the whole unhappy man is furiously carried away to serve the brutish lusts of the insolent usurper and augment the triumphs of libidinous carnality which degrades him from the dignity of his nature and cassating all his royal prerogatives debases him to a parity with beasts if not below them for Reason once debauch'd so as to become brutal leads to all sorts of excess whereof beasts are seldom guilty Yet this is not alwaies the issue of the war Sometimes it happens that the victory falls to the right side and the Princess overpowring the Rebell reduces her to due submission and conformity Nay somtimes Reason after she hath been long held captive breaks off her fetters and remembring her native Soveraignty grows conscious and ashamed of her former lapses and thereupon with fresh courage and vigour renewing the conflict vanquishes and deposes the Sensitive Soul with all its legions of lusts and gloriously re-establishes herself in the throne Yea more at once to secure her empire for the future and expiate the faults of her male-administration in times past she by bitter remorse severe contrition and sharp penance punishes herself and humbles her traitorous enemy the Flesh. And as the war itself so this act of Conscience this self-chastising affection being proper to Man alone doth clearly shew that in Man there are either two Souls one Subordinate to the other or two parts of the same Soul one opposing the other and contending about the government of him and his affections But which of these two consequents is most likely to be true you may have already collected from my discourse precedent It remains then that I give you some account of the Opinions or rather Conjectures of Men for they can be no other which seem to me most probable concerning the Origin of the Reasonable Soul concerning the principle seat of it in the body concerning its connexion with the Sensitive Soul and concerning the manner of its Vnderstanding For the First if the Rational Soul be a pure Spirit i. e. a simple or incompound substance as I have already shewn her proper acts affections and objects seem to infer and as most wise men ancient and modern Ethnics and Christians Philosophers and Theologues have unanimously held her to be and if it seem inconsistent with the purity and simplicity of such a Being to be generated by the Parents who are compound Beings as reason teacheth us it is granting this I say nothing can remain to divorce me from that common opinion which holds that she is created immediately by God and infused into the body of a human Embryon so soon as that is organized formed and prepared to receive her For as to that grand Objection that the Son oftentimes most exactly resembles the Father not only in temperament shape stature features and all other things discernable in the body but in disposition also wit affections and the rest of the Animal faculties and therefore it must needs be that the Father begets the Rational Soul as well as the body it is easy to detect the weakness thereof in the violence of the illation Since all those endowments and faculties wherein the chief similitude doth consist proceed immediately from the Corporeal Soul which I grant to be indeed Ex traduce or propagated by the Father but not the Rational which is of Divine Original For the Second viz. the Rational Souls chief seat or Mansion in the body tho I cannot conceive how or in what manner an immaterial can reside in a material because I can have no representation or idea in my mind of any such thing yet nevertheless when I consider that all impressions of sensible objects whereof we are any ways conscious are carried immediately to the Imagination and that there likewise all Appetites or spontaneous conceptions and intentions of actions are excited I am very apt to judge the Imagination to be the Esâ—urial or imperial palace of the Rational Soul where she may most conveniently both receive all intelligences from her Emissaries the senses and give forth orders for government of the whole state of Man That the whole Corporeal soul should be possessed by the Rational seems neither competent to her Spiritual nature which is above Extensibility nor necessary to her Empire over all no more than it is necessary for a King to be present in all parts of his dominions at the same time And if she be as it were inthroned in any one part thereof what part so convenient so advantagious as the Phantasy where she may immediately be informed of all occurrents in the whole body and whence she may issue forth mandates for all she would have done by the whole or any member thereof I think therefore I may affirm it to be probable that this Queen of the Isle of Man hath her Court and Tribunal in the noblest part of the Sensitive Soul the Imagination made up of a select assembly of the most subtil Spirits Animal and placed in the middle of the Brain As for the Conarion or Glandula pinealis seated neer the center of the brain wherein Monsieur Des Cartes took such pains to lodge this Celestial ghest all our most curious Anatomists will demonstrate that Glandule to be ordained for another and that a far less noble use which here I need not mention For the Third to wit what obligeth the Rational Soul to continue resident in the Imagination during this life truely I cannot think either that she is capable of or that she needs any other ligament or tye than the infringible law of nature or Will of her Divine Creator who makes and destines her to reside in the body of man to be his Forma informans and gives her therefore a strong inclination to inhabit that her inne or lodging ordaining her to have a certain dependence as to her operation upon the Phantasy so that without the help and subserviency thereof she can know or understand little or nothing at all For it is from the Imagination alone that she takes all the representations of things and the fundamental ideas upon which she afterward builds up all her Science all her wisdom And therefore though the Mind of one man understands more and reasoneth better than another it doth not thence follow that their Rational
point of temperament and as this or that of the usual concomitants of it is more powerful than the rest so must the Effects thereof upon the body be likewise various And from this variety men have taken notice chiefly of two sorts of Anger One that is quickly kindled violent at first and discovers it self visibly by outward signs but performs little and may be easily composed And to this they are most obnoxious who are good-natur'd i.e. who are inclined to goodness and love For it ariseth not from profound Hatred but from a sudden Aversion surprising them because being propens to conceive that all things ought to proceed in that manner which they judge to be the best whenever they see others to act otherwise first they admire and then are offended and so what would be to others matter only of Indignation to them proves cause of Anger But this commotion is soon calmed because the force of the sudain Aversion that raised it continues not long and so soon as they perceive that the thing for which they were offended ought not to have commoved them to passion they suppress their displeasure and repent of it The Other that wherein Hatred and Grief are predominant and which though at first it hardly betray it self by external signs unless by the suddain paleness of the countenance and trembling is notwithstanding more impetuous within secretly gnaws the very heart and produceth dangerous effects And to this pernicious sort of Anger they are most subject who have prouâ— cowardly and weak Souls For so much the greater doe injuries appear by how much the better opinion pride makes Men to have of themselves yea and by how much greater value is put upon the things which the injuries take away and these things are alwaies so much the more valued by how much the more weak and abject the Soul is because they depend upon others but the Generous put little value upon any thing that is not dependent upon themselves When we consider what opinion other Men have of Us the Good which we believe to be in us disposeth us to Glory which seems to be composed of Self-estimation and Ioy for to see ourselves well esteemed by others gives us cause to have a good esteem for ourselves and on the contrary the Evil we are conscious of forceth us to Shame which is a sort of Modesty or Humility and Self-diffidence for as we have formerly observed who thinks himself above Contempt will hardly be humbled to shame These two Passions Glory and Shame tho directly opposite each to other doe yet agree in their End which is to incite us to Virtue the first by hope the other by fear and that we may make a right use of them both we are to have our judgment well instructed what actions are truely worthy praise or dispraise lest otherwise we be ashamed of virtuous actions or affect glory from vices as it happeneth to too great a part of mankind Thus have we at length recounted all the Passions of this our fifth division and deduced them successively from their several causes or occasions in that order wherein their most remarkable diversity seemd to us most easily distinguishable But now because some of these passions are simple others Composed and that to our more clear understanding of the nature of both sorts it is necessary to enquire more profoundly into the Motions of the Sensitive Soul and spirits that constitute their Essential Differences it remains that we yeeld obedience to that necessity so far forth at least as to explain the Motions proper to that couplet of more simple affections Ioy and Grief the two points in which all human actions end and to that most violent one Anger In Ioy therefore which is a delightful commotion of the Sensitive Soul as it were triumphing in her fruition of good or pleasure I conceive that the Animal spirits being in great abundance but with a placid and equal motion sent by the nerves to the heart cause the orifices thereof to be opened and dilated more than at other times and so the blood to be imported and exported more copiously and freely and that by this means from the blood are brought into the brain a plentious supply of new spirits which extracted out of the purest and most refined parts of the blood are most fit to confirm the idea formed of the present good in the imagination and so to continue the Soul in her pleasant Emotion Hence probably it is that in this most agreeable passion both the pulse is alwaies made equal and more frequent tho not so intense and strong as in Love and a certain gratefull heat is felt not only through the Lungs and all the breast but through all outward parts of the body from the diffusion of the blood in full streams into them which is discernible even by the florid purple colour wherewith they are suddainly tinged and by the inflation or plumpness of all the muscles of the face which is thereby rendered more serene sweet and cheerful Easy therefore it is to infer that as this passion is most congruous to the nature of the Corporeal Soul so are the corporeal motions that accompany and characterize it most profitable to health provided they be moderare For this Commotion and Effusion may be so vehement and suddain that the Soul may become weak and unable to rule the body or to actuate the organs of speech yea swooning and death itself somtimes follow profuse and insolent Joy So Lacon Chilo an eminent Philosopher suddainly expired in excessive joy beholding his Sonne a Victor in the Olympic games So Sophocles the Tragedian also and Dionysius the Tyrant died of a surfet of suddain Joy The reason whereof seems to consist not in a vehement effusion and dissipation of the vital spirits and a destitution of the Heart consequent thereunto as Fernelius would have it because the faster the blood is effused through the arteries from the heart the swifter must it return to the heart through the veines so that the heart cannot be totaly exhausted and left destitute of blood but rather in a surcharge and suffocation of the heart by too redundant an afflux of blood For upon extraordinary dilatation of the floud-gates of the heart by immoderate joy the current of blood both out of the Vena cava and from the arteria venosa may pour itself with so much violence and in so great a quantity into the ventricles thereof that the heart unable to discharge itself soon enough of that oppressing deluge by retruding its valves may be suffocated its motions stopped and the Vital Flame in a moment extinguished For certain it is that in the state of health the blood is not admitted into the heart beyond a certain proportion nor can that proportion be much exceeded whatever the cause be that maketh an apertio portarum there without manifest danger of life Among the Signs of this delightful passion
by prejudice to praise or dispraise and that they are more propens to malignity and detraction than to charity and candor The Vulgar then and all that herd with them I exclude from my studies lest by perversely interpreting them as they do all things they should interrupt my tranquility which I value infinitely above their favour and wherein I endeavour to find a happiness which neither their hatred nor the iniquity of Fortune shall take from me That I may find this the sooner I now and then entertain myself with serious reflections upon my own defects as the only impediments that have hitherto hindered me from attaining unto it and among the rest I hold my mind longest fixed on this following Meditation which I therefore freely impart to you who are my Friend both because I think it may be of equal use to you also by helping you to moderate your Affections to the transitory things of this shadow of life and because the precedent discourse will perhaps be somwhat the less imperfect after it hath received so pertinent a CONCLVSION THat all the Good and Evil of this life depends upon the various Passions incident to the Mind of Man I need no other document than my own dearly bought Experience which hath too often convinced me that while I out of weakness suffered my self to be seduced and transported by the ardor and excesses of my Affections I have fallen into Errors that have more dejected my spirit than a long succession of infortunes could ever doe and from whence I could not expect better fruit than that of shame sorrow and repentance Notwithstanding this I ought not to be so unjust so ingrateful to Nature as to transfer the blame of such Errors upon her as if she had been less careful than she might have been to secure Man from infelicity only because she thought fit to make him obnoxious to so great a multitude of inward Perturbations No I ought rather to remember that among all of them there is no one but hath its Vse and that a good one too provided we rightly imploy the forces Nature hath given us to keep it within the bounds of Moderation And it may suffice to Natures vindication that reason obligeth me to acknowledge that her design in instituting our Passions was in the general this that they might dispose and incite the Soul to affect and desire those things which Nature by secret dictates teacheth to be good and profitable to her and to persist in that desire as the same commotion of the spirits that is requisite to produce them doth dispose the parts of the Body also to those motions that serve to the execution of her will And hence doubtless it is that they who are naturaly most apt to be moved by passions have this advantage above others of duller and grosser constitutions that they may if they will tast more of the pleasures belonging to the Sensitive Soul but then again they are likewise thereby more exposed to drink of the gall and wormwood of pain and remorse when they know not how to regulate their passions and when adverse Fortune invades them I am confirmed then that because man is constituted propens to Passions he is not therefore the less perfect but rather the more capable of pleasure from the right use of the good things of this life and by consequence that Nature by making him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath therein signalized both her wisedom and indulgence But had he not been more perfect if it had pleased his Creator to endow him moreover with such Excellency above all other Animals as might have secured him from committing Errors through the violent instigation of his Passions whenever they should incite him to desire and persue things not realy but onely apparently good for him Certainly no. For it is not only impious but highly absurd to imagine that God can be Author of our Errors because he hath not given to us an Understanding Omniscious for it is of the formal reason of a created intellect that it be finite and of a finite intellect that it extend not itself to all things But that Man should have a Will unconfined or extensible to all things this indeed is convenient to his nature and it is a transcendent perfection in him that he can and doth act by his own will that is freely and so is by a peculiar prerogative Author of his own actions and may deserve praise and reward for them For no Man praiseth a Watch or any other Self-moving engine made by art for performing the motions thereby designed because those motions necessarily result from the figure and construction of its parts but the Artist himself deserves praise because he framed the engine not by necessity or compulsion but freely So we by the same reason deserve the more by well doing that is by embracing truth because we do it voluntary or by election than we should if we could not but do it When therefore we fall into Errors occasioned by our Passions the defect lieth in our own act or in the use of our liberty not in our nature for that is the same when we make an erroneous judgement of things represented to us as it is when we make a right judgment And although Almighty God might if He had thought good have given so great perspicacity to our Understanding as that we could never have been deceived yet by what right can we require that privilege from him True it is I confess that among us Men if any hath power to hinder this or that evil and yet doth not hinder it we accuse him as cause of it and justly too because the power that Men have one over others was instituted and committed to them to that end that they should use it to the restraining of others from evil But there is not the same reason why we should think God to be Author of our Errors only because it was in His power to have prevented them by making us superior to deception for the power that God hath of right over all Men is most soveraign most absolute most free And therefore we are obliged to ascribe to His Divine Majesty all possible praise and thanks for the good gifts He hath out of his infinite benignity been pleased to bestow upon us his Creatures but we have no pretext of right to complain because He hath not conferred upon us all things that we conceive he might Besides although the Intellect of Man be not omniscious yet is it not so narrow so limited as not to extend to the conduct of his Unlimited Will in the Election of Good and avoidance of Evil and consequently to his exemption from Error by the violence of his Passions For first by virtue of his Understanding Man is capable of Wisedom which is alone able to teach him how to subdue and govern all his Affections and how to dispense them with such dexterity as not
Sensitive Soul hath been borrowed from that elaborate work of our Learned Dr. Willis de Anima Brutorum lately published Which I hold my self bound here ingeniously to acknowledge left otherwise you might justly condemn me as a Plagiary and that I may invite you also to the pleasure of attentively reading that useful Book Wherein I found great part of what I had formerly read of that subject in various Authors so well collected digested and explained that I chose from thence to copy an image of the Sensitive Soul of Man whereupon I was often to reflect my thoughts while I fate to describe the most remarkable of the Passions to which it is liable and this I did the rather because at that time I had by me no other Book of the same subject You are not therefore to look upon the Description of the nature and affections of a Sensitive Soul therein delivered as a supposition newly excogitated and unheard of by former ages For to Men conversant in the Theories of Physiologists concerning that Subject it is well known that all the Ancients were so far from holding the Soul of a Brute to be other than Corporeal that they for the most part taught their Disciples that the Soul of Man was so too except a few of them namely Pythagoras Plato and in some favourable sense Aristotle when he defined the Soul by that enigmatical term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his Sectators Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus when they called it a Harmony True it is indeed they were much divided in their opinions about the Substance or Matter of a Soul some imagining it to be of Fire as Heraclitus Democritus Hipparchus and the Stoicks some conceiving it to be on the contrary of a Watery nature as Hippon and Thales others fancying it to be composed of Water and Earth as Xenophanes others of Earth and Fire as Parmenides others again of all the four Elements as Empedocles and yet notwithstanding they unanimously consented in these points that this Corporeal Soul is divisible composed of particles extremely small subtil and active diffused through or coextens to the whole body wherein it is contained produced at first by generation out of the seed of the parents perpetualy recruited or regenerated out of the purest and most spirituous part of the nourishment subject to Contraction and Expansion in passions and finally dissolved or extinguished by death If you doubt of the truth of what I here say I know not how more easily to convince you than by referring you to the incomparable Gassendus in Lib. 10. Diogen Laert. cap. de natura contexturà que Animae ad mentem Epicuri where you find the same more amply delivered Meanwhile suffer me to recite a pertinent and memorable text of the Lord Verulam's of the Advancement of Learning Book 4. Chap. 3. that now comes into my head The Sensible Soul saith he must needs be granted to be a Corporeal substance attenuated by heat and made invisible I say a thin gentle gale of wind swell'd and blown up from some flamy and and airy nature indued with the softness of aire to receive impression and with the vigour of fire to embrace action nourished partly by an oyly partly by a watery substance spread over the body residing in perfect creatures chiefly in the head running through the nerves refreshed and repaired by the spirituous part of the blood of the arteries as Bernardinus Telesius de rerum natura lib. 5. and his Scholar Augustinus Donius have delivered it And as for the Bipartition of this Sensitive Soul into two principle members as it were or active sourses vix the Fiery part upon which Life depends and the Lucid from whence all the faculties Animal are like so many distinct rayes of light derived I will not affirm it to be very ancient but yet methinks I discern more than a shadow thereof in some lines of the same most acute Lord Bacon de vita morte explicatione canonis quartae which are these Spiritus vitalis omnis sibi continuatur per quosdam canales per quos permeat nec totaliter intercipitur Atque hic Spiritus etiam duplex est alter ramosus tantum permeans per parvos ductus tanquam lineas alter habet etiam cellam ut non tantum sibi continuetur sed etiam congregetur in spatio aliquo cavo in bene magna quantitate pro analogia corporis atque in illa cella est fons rivulorum qui inde deducantur Ea cella praecipue est in ventriculis cerebri qui in animalibus magis ignobilioribus angusti sunt adeo ut videantur spiritus per universum corpus fusi potius quam cellulati ut cernere est in Serpentibus Anguillis Muscis quorum singulae portiones abscissae moventur diu etiam Aves diutius capitibus avulsis subsultant quoniam parva habeant capita parvas cellas At animalia nobiliora ventriculos eos habent ampliores maximè omnium Homo Alterum discrimen inter spiritus est quod spiritus Vitalis nonnullam habeat incensionem atque sit tanquam aura composita ex flamma aere quemadmodum succi animalium habeant oleum aquam At illa incensio peculiares praebet motus facultates Etenim fumus inflammabilis etiam ante flammam conceptam calidus est tenuis mobilis tamen alia res est postquam facta sit flamma at incensio spirituum vitalium multis partibus lenior est quà m mollissima flamma ex spiritu vini aut alias atque insuper mixta est magna ex parte cum substantia aerea ut sit flammeae aereae naturae mysterium This place of that Prince of Modern Philosophers the Lord St. Albans conjoyned to that other of his immediately precedent seems to me to contain a pourtraiture of the Sensitive Soul drawn indeed as in perspective in colours somwhat faint and not accurately ground yet with good judgment and bold strokes of the pencill such as give it no obscure resemblance of the original And if you Sir please to compare it with the more ample description of the same Sensitive Soul lately set forth by Dr. Willis it will not be difficult to you to observe in how many things they agree ¶ The THIRD and last thing whereof I am here to advertise you is that in the description of many of the Passions likewise I have interwoven some threds taken from the webbs of those three excellent Men Gassendus Des Cartes and our Mr. Hobbes who have all written most judiciously of that obstruse theme Nor will I otherwise excuse myself for being so liberal to you of what I owe to the bounty of those richer Wits than by reciting what your beloved Seneca said to his dear Lucilius in defense of his adopting for his own so many wise and memorable sentences of his and our Oracle Epicurus adhuc de alieno liberalis sum Quare autem alienum dixi
both conjoyned and improved into Habits by long practice and experience yet in the end we shall be forced to confess that even the most intricate and most cunning of all their actions come far short of those that are ordinarily done by Man by virtue of the Reasonable Soul wherewith he is by the immense bounty of his Creator endowed This is a Verity so obvious to every Man of common sense and understanding so evident by its own splendor that it needs neither Arguments drawn from reason to establish nor Examples drawn from frequent observations to illustrate it especially now after the many excellent discourses thereupon writen by Learned Men of almost all ages all nations all professions It being therefore unnecessary for me by prolix reasoning to evince and superfluous by multiplicity of instances to elucidate the vast disparity betwixt the proper Acts and Operations of a Reasonable Soul and those inferior ones of a Sensitive I shall only in brief and analytically recount to you a few of those many Excellencies and Prerogatives essential to the former and by the law of nature incommunicable to the later The Preeminence then of Mans Reasonable Soul is undeniably manifest from both her Objects and her Acts. Her Objects are all things whatsoever true or false real or imaginary within or without the World sensible or insensible infinite or finite for to all these can she extend her unconfined power of speculation I doubt indeed whether it be possible for her in this life while she is obliged to speculate all things by the help of images or corporeal representations to have an adequate and full cognition of the superexcellent nature of God but yet it cannot be denied that she is capable of knowing for certain that there is such an incomprehensible Being as God and that He is infinite and Eternal I doubt also whether the mind of Man be capable of any true notion of an Angell Spirit Daemon or other the like Beings which the Schools commonly how intelligibly let others dispute call immaterial Substances because I myself can represent to my thoughts nothing but under some certain figure and quantity which are inseparable from body and yet who dares deny th' Existence of such Beings in the World To speculate such objects then as fall not under the perception of any of the senses is the prerogative of a Rational Soul nor can a Sensitive possibly have any knowledge of things above the sphere of her own nature all her faculties being corporeal and by consequence limited to corporeal objects and those too no other than what are perceptible by the senses Her Acts also equaly declare her transcendent Powers That act of simple apprehension which in Brutes is Imagination is in Man Intellection and the intellect presides over imagination discerning the Errors of it occasion'd by the senses and correcting them yea subliming the notions thereof into true and usefull ones And as for forming of Propositions by compounding or dividing the simple notions of sensible things that power is indeed common to the Sensitive Soul also and usualy exercised by her when an image of some object newly admitted meets with one or more images either fâ—â—merly stored up in the Memory or at that instant suggested by natural instinct and is found associable or repugnant to them but yet the same falls incomparably short of that which belongs to the Human Intellect Which doth not only review all propositions conceiv'd from the Phantasy but judges also whether they be true or false congruous or incongruous and then orders and disposes them accordingly into trains of notions convenient either to Speculation or to practice Moreover it restrains the Phantasy of itself instable and prone to ramble through various phantasms calls it away from extravagant and useless conceptions directs it to others more conform to reason and at pleasure confines it within certain bounds that it may not divert or range too wide from the purpose All which Acts give clear evidence that there is in Man a Soul superiour to the sensitive and which moderates and governs all the faculties and operations of it yea more yet which from representations sensible deduces many other notions of things altogether unknown to sense and which the Phantasy is of itself wholly incapable to imagine For it understands Axioms or first principles and that by its own power alone without recourse to corporeal species and what is yet more noble and sublime by a reflex act views itself thinks that it thinks from thence certainly knowing its ' own Existence which cannot be either perceived by sense or imagined by Phantasy Whereas neither the Sense nor Imagination for of these there are no images extant can perceive that they perceive or imagine To these royal prerogatives of Mans Rational Soul let us subjoyn the native right she hath to the whole Encyclopaedia or Zodiac of Arts and Sciences Theology Logic Physic Metaphysics Mathematics Algebra Geometry Astronomy Mechanics which being all Theology alone excepted the products or creatures of Mans Mind sufficiently attest their Author to be an Agent Spiritual admirably intelligent immaterial and therefore immortal Now if this be true as most certainly it is then one of these two Assumptions must be so too Either the Rational Soul of man doth alone perform all offices not only of Vnderstanding and discourse but of sense also and life and so administer the whole oeconony of Human nature Or else there are in every individual Man two distinct Souls conjoined and acting together one only Rational t'other merely Sensitive that as Queen regent this as inferior and subordinate The FIRST seems to me not a little improbable For 1 all acts of the Senses and animal Motions as likewise the Passions are corporeal divided and extended to various parts and therefore the Rational Soul which we conceive to be incorporeal indivisible and finite seems incapable to cause or impress those motions immediately or by herself To me I confess it seems Unintelligible how an incorporeal Agent not infinite can physically act in and upon a gross body immediately or without the intervention of a third thing which though corporeal too is yet notwithstanding of parts so spirituous and of a constitution so subtil as to approach somwhat neerer to the nature of a pure Spirit than solid and ponderous body doth Flame and light I acknowledge to be bodies but yet methinks there is less of disproportion or disparity betwixt them and a substance purely spiritual than is betwixt a pure Spirit and a gross heavy body such as ours is And therefore in my weak judgment it is more conceivable that the Reasonable Soul should have some spirituous and subtile thing as flame or light is viz. the Sensitive Soul conjoyned with her to be a convenient Medium betwixt herself and the gross body to receive her immediate influence and actuate the body according to her will and pleasure than it is that she should immediately move
Souls are unequal in their natural capacity of understanding and discourse because the disparity proceeds immediately from difference of Imagination mediately and principally from the various dispositions of the Brain For when the Animal Spirits being either of themselves less pure subtil and active than is requisite or hinderd in their expansion and motions are not able duely to irradiate and actuate the Brain affected with some distemper or originally formed amiss in such case the Phatasms created in the Imagination must be either deficient or distorted and the Intellect being obliged to judge of them accordingly must be misinformed Hence it often happens that by reason of some wound contusion or other great hurt done to the brain men who formerly were of acute wit and excellent understanding are more or less deprived of those noble Faculties and degenerate into mere fools or idiots For the acquiring and loseing the habit of intellection and ratiocination depends totally upon the Brain and Imagination the corporeal subject thereof but the Intellect it self since it hath no parts cannot be perfected by parts being from the beginning and of its own nature a full and perfect power of Understanding Nor doth it by accession of any whatever Habit understand more but is it self rather a Habit alwayes comparated to understand And in truth the principal Function of the human Intellect seems to be this that it be of its own nature merely intelligent that is knowing things not by ratiocination but by simple intuition But during its confinement within the body it is surrounded with that darkness that it doth not simply nakedly and as it were by way of intuition perceive all things which it understands but attains to most of its knowledge by reasoning that is successively and by proceeding as it were by degrees If therefore the Organ or instrument by the help of which the Intellect is obliged to ratiocinate or gradualy to attain to the knowledge of things be unfit or out of tune no wonder if it be not able to make good Musick thereupon Concerning the Fourth and last thing therefore namely the Manner how this Unintelligible Intellect of man comes to know speculate and judge of all Phantasms or images pourtraid in the Imagination I can much more easily guess what it is not than what it is I am not inclined to espouse their conceit who tell us that the Rational Soul sitting in the brain somewhere near the original of the nerves belonging to the Senses as a Spider sits watching in the centre of her net and feeling all strokes made upon them by the Species of sensible objects distinguishes and judges of their several qualities and proprieties by the different modes of their impressions Because the supposition of a percussion or stroke to be made by a Corporeal image is manifestly repugnant to a Faculty incorporeal But whether or no I ought to acquiesce in that other opinion delivered and maintained by a whole army of Contemplative men viz. That the Intellect knowes and discerns things by simple Intuition i.e. by beholding their Images represented in the Phantasy as we see our faces represented in a mirror or looking-glass truely I am yet to learn from wiser heads than mine For though I admire the subtilty of the conceipt and love not to be immodestly Sceptical especially in matters that transcend my narrow comprehension yet to speak ingenuously I as little understand how Intuition can be ascribed to an immaterial that hath no Eyes as I do how Feeling of strokes can be ascribed to a thing that cannot be touched Nevertheless I will not point blanck deny this latter opinion to be true only because I cannot perceive the Competency of such an act as intuition to the incorporeal Soul of man for that were to make my scanty reason the measure of truth and to confide more in my own dulness than in the admired perspicacity of so many eminent Wits preceding me Wherefore having confess'd my ignorance I refer the matter to your arbitration allowing you as much time as you shall think fit seriously to consider the same and in the interim contentedly suspending my curiosity which hath too often perplexed me For hitherto could I never drive it into my head how those terms of infusion connexion and intuition can be intelligibly applyed to a spiritual or incompound essence such as we conceive the Reasonable Soul to be and if I have used them in this discourse it was rather because I could think of none less improper than because I approved them as adequate to the notions to which they are vulgarly accommodated Besides I hold it extremly difficult not to speak some non-sense when we adventure to treat of the nature of spirits whereof we understand so little and you I presume will rather pitty than condemn a man for stumbling in the dark But I have too long detain'd you upon Preliminaries and therefore deprecating your impatience invite you now from the porch into the little Theatre of the Passions which I design'd to erect more for your divertisement than study SECT IV. Of the Passions of the Mind in general TAking it for granted then from the reasons precedent that in Man besides the Rational Soul by which he becomes a Reasonable creature there is also a Sensitive one by which he is made a living and sensitive creature and that this later being merely Corporeal and coextens to the body it animates is by the law of its nature subject to various Mutations I come in the next place to consider what are the most remarkable of those Mutations and the Causes whence they usually arise as likewise the principal effects of them upon the body and mind of man Obvious it is to every mans notice that there is a twofold state or condition of his Sensitive Soul one of quiet and tranquillity another of disquiet and perturbation every man living finding his spirit sometimes calm and serene sometimes agitated and ruffled more or less by the winds and tempests of passions raised within him In the state of Tranquillity it seems probable that the whole Corporeal Soul being coextens to the whole body inshrining it as the body is to the skin envesting it doth at the same time both inliven all parts with the vital flame of the blood to that end carried in a perpetual round as the vulgar conceive the Sun to be uncessantly moved round about the Earth to illuminate and warm all parts of it and irradiate and invigorate them with a continual supply of Animal spirits for the offices of Sense and Motion And this Halcyon state certainly is the only fair weather we enjoy within the region of our breast and the best part of human life On the contrary in the state of Perturbation all that excellent Oeconomy is more or less discomposed Then it seems that the same frail soul is so strongly shock'd and commoved that not only her vital part the blood the calm and equal circulation