or Faculty of any Essence changes it self for it is the Essence it self that exerts it self into these variations of Modes if no externall Agent is the cause of these changes And Mr. Hobbs opposing an Externall Agent to this Thing that he saies does not change it self does naturally imply That they are both not Faculties but Substances he speakes of 7. Wherefore there remains onely the latter Proposition to be examined That no Essence of it self can vary its Modification That some Essence must have had a power of moving is plain in that there is Motion in the world which must be the effect of some Substance or other But that Motion in a large sense taking it for mutation or change may proceed from that very Essence in which it is found seemes to me plain by Experience For there is an Essence in us whatever we will call it which we find endued with this property as appears from hence that it has variety of perceptions Mathematicall Logicall and I may adde also Morall that are not any impresses nor footsteps of Corporeall Motion as I have already demonstrated and any man may observe in himself and discover in the writings of others how the Minde has passed from one of these perceptions to another in very long deductions of Demonstration as also what stilness from bodily Motion is required in the excogitation of such series of Reasons where the Spirits are to run into no other posture nor motion then what they are guided into by the Mind it self where these immateriall and intellectuall Notions have the leading and rule Besides in grosser Phantasmes which are supposed to be somewhere impressed in the Brain the composition of them and disclusion and various disposall of them is plainly an arbitrarious act and implies an Essence that can as it lists excite in it self the variety of such Phantasmes as have been first exhibited to her from Externall Objects and change them and transpose them at her own will But what need I reason against this ground of Mr. Hobbs so sollicitously it being sufficient to discover that he onely saies that No Essence can change the Modifications of it self but does not prove it and therefore whatever he would infer hereupon is meerly upon a begg'd Principle 8. But however from this precarious ground he will infer that whenever we have a Will to a thing the cause of this Will is not the Will it self but something else not in our own disposing the meaning whereof must be That whenever we Will some corporeall impress which we cannot avoid forces us thereto But the Illation is as weak as bold it being built upon no foundation as I have already shewn I shall onely take notice how Mr. Hobbs though he has rescued himself from the authority of the Schools and would fain set up for himself yet he has not freed himself from their fooleries in talking of Faculties and Operations and the absurditie is alike in both as separate and distinct from the Essence they belong to wich causes a great deal of distraction and obscurity in the speculation of things I speak this in reference to those expressions of his of the Will being the cause of willing and of its being the necessary cause of voluntary actions and of things not being in its disposing Whenas if a man would speak properly and desired to be understood he would say That the Subject in which is this power or act of willing call it Man or the Soul of Man is the cause of this or that voluntary action But this would discover his Sophistry wherewith haply he has entrapt himself which is this Something out of the power of the Will necessarily causes the Will the Will once caused is the necessary cause of voluntary actions and therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated 9. Besides that the first part of this Argumentation is groundless as I have already intimated the second is sophisticall that sayes That the Will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions For by necessary may be understood either necessitated forced and made to act whether it will or no or else it may signify that the Will is a requisite cause of voluntary actions so that there can be no voluntary actions without it The latter whereof may be in some sense true but the former is utterly false So the Conclusion being inferred from assertions whereof the one is groundless the other Sophisticall the Illation cannot but be ridiculously weak and despicable But if he had spoke in the Concrete in stead of the Abstract the Sophistry had been more grossly discoverable or rather the train of his reasoning languid and contemptible Omitting therefore to speak of the Will separately which of it self is but a blind Power or Operation let us speak of that Essence which is endued with Will Sense Reason and other Faculties and see what face this argumentation of his will bear which will then run thus 10. Some externall irresistible Agent does ever necessarily cause that Essence call it Soule or what you please which is endued with the faculties of Will and Understanding â—o Will. This Essence endued with the power of exerting it self into the act of Willing is the necessary cause of Voluntary actions Therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated The first Assertion now at first sight appears a gross falshood the Soule being endued with Understanding as well as Will and therefore she is not necessarily determined to will by externall impresses but by the displaying of certain notions and perceptions she raises in her self that be purely intellectuall And the second seems a very slim and lank piece of Sophistrie Both which my reasons already alledged doe so easily and so plainly reach that I need add nothing more but pass to his second Argument the form whereof in brief is this 11. Every Cause is a sufficient cause otherwise it could not produce its effect Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause that is to say will be sure to produce the effect otherwise something was wanting thereto and it was no sufficient cause And therefore every cause is a necessary cause and consequently every Effect or Action even those that are termed Voluntary are necessitated This reasoning looks smartly at first view but if we come closer to it we shall find it a pittifull piece of Sophistry which is easily detected by observing the ambiguity of that Proposition Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause For the force lyes not so much in that it is said to be Sufficient as in that it is said to be a Cause which if it be it must of necessity have an Effect whether it be sufficient or insufficient which discovers the Sophisme For these relative terms of Cause and Effect necessarily imply one another But every Being that is sufficient to act this or that if it will and so to become the Cause thereof doth neither act nor abstain from acting necessarily And therefore if it doe act
it addes Will to the Sufficiency of its power and if it did not act it is not because it had not sufficient power but because it would not make use of it So that we see that every sufficient Cause rightly understood without captiositie is not a necessary cause nor will be sure to produce the Effect and that though there be a sufficiency of power yet there may be something wanting to wit the exertion of the Will whereby it may come to pass that what might have acted if it would did not but if it did Will being added to sufficient Power that it cannot be said to be necessary in any other sense then of that Axiome in Metaphysicks Quicquid est quamdiu est necesse est esse The reason whereof is because it is impossible that a thing should be and not be at once But before it acted it might have chosen whether it would have acted or no but it did determine it self And in this sense is it to be said to be a free Agent not a necessary one So that it is manifest that though there be some prettie perversness of wit in the contriving of this Argument yet there is no solidity at all at the bottome 12. And as little is there in his third But in this I must confess I cannot so much accuse him of Art and Sophistrie as of ignorance of the rules of Logick for he does plainly assert That the necessity of the truth of that Proposition there named depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts thereof then which no grosser errour can be committed in the Art of reasoning For he might as well say that the necessity of the truth of a Connex Axiome depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts as of a Disjunct But in a Connex when both the parts are not onely false but impossible yet the Axiome is necessarily true As for example If Bucephalus be a man he is endued with humane reason this Axiome is necessarily true and yet the parts are impossible For Alexanders horse can neither be a man nor have the reason of a man either radically or actually The necessity therefore is only laid upon the connexion of the parts not upon the parts themselves So when I say To morrow it will rain or it will not rain this Disjunct Proposition also is necessary but the necessity lyes upon the Disjunction of the parts not upon the parts themselves For they being immediately disjoyned there is a necessity that one of them must be though there be no necessity that this must be determined rather then that As when a man is kept under custodie where he has the use of two rooms only though there be a necessity that he be found in one of the two yet he is not confined to either one of them And to be brief and prevent those frivolous both answers and replyes that follow in the pursuit of this Argument in Mr. Hobbs As the necessity of this Disjunct Axiome lyes upon the Disjunction it self so the truth of which this necessity is a mode must lye there too for it is the Disjunction of the parts that is affirmed and not the parts themselves as any one that is but moderately in his wits must needs acknowledg 13. There is a more dangerous way that Mr. Hobbs might have made use of and with more credit but yet scarce with better success which is the consideration of an Axiome that pronounces of a future Contingent such as this Cras Socrates disputabit For every Axiome pronouncing either true or false as all doe agree upon if this Axiome be now true it is impossible but Socrates should dispute to morrow or if it be now false it is impossible he should and so his Action of disputing or the omission thereof will be necessary for the Proposition cannot be both true and false at once Some are much troubled to extricate themselves out of this Nooze but if we more precisely enquire into the sense of the Proposition the difficultie will vanish He therefore that affirms that Socrates will dispute to morrow affirms it to use the distinction of Futurities that Aristotle somewhere suggests either as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is either as a thing that is likely to be but has a possibility of being otherwise or else as a thing certainly to come to pass If this latter the Axiome is false if the former it is true and so the liberty of Socrates his action as also of all like contingent effects are thus easily rescued from this sophistical entanglement For every Future Axiome is as incapable of our judgment unless we determine the sense of it by one of the forenamed modes as an Indefinite Axiome is before we in our minds adde the notes of Universality or Particularity Neither can we say of either of them that they are true or false till we have compleated and determined their sense 14. His fourth Argument he proposes with some diffidence and dislike as if he thought it not good Logick they are his own words to make use of it and adde it to the rest And for my own part I cannot but approve of the consistency of his judgment and coherency with other parts of his Philosophie For if there be nothing but Body or Matter in the whole comprehension of things it will be very hard to find out any such Deity as has the knowledg or foreknowledg of any thing And therefore I suspect that this last is onely cast in as argumentum ad hominem to puzzle such as have not dived to so profound a depth of naturall knowledg as to fancy they have discovered there is no God in the world 15. But let him vilifie it as he will it is the only Argument he has brought that has any tolerable sense or solidity in it and it is a Subject that has exercised the wits of all Ages to reconcile the Liberty of mans Will with the Decrees and Praescience of God But my Freeness I hope and Moderation shall make this matter more easy to me then it ordinarily proves to them that venture upon it My Answer therefore in brief shall be this 16. That though there be such a Faculty in the Soule of man as Liberty of Will yet she is not alwaies in a state of acting according to it For she may either degenerate so far that it may be as certainly known what she will doe upon this or that occasion as what an hungry Dog will doe when a crust is offered him which is the generall condition of almost all men in most occurrencies of their lives or else she may be so Heroically good though that happen in very few that it may be as certainly known as before what she will doe or suffer upon such or such emergencies and in these cases the use of Liberty of Will ceases 17. That the use of the Facultie of Free-will is properly
error ac timor multum in hominibus possunt will prevail more with them then all the Stories the same Authour writes of Apparitions or whatever any one else can adde unto them And others that doe admit of these things praeconceptions from Education That the Soul when she departs this life is suddenly either twitched up into the Coelum Empyreum or hurried down headlong towards the Centre of the Earth makes the Apparitions of the Ghosts of men altogether incredible to them they always substituting in their place some Angel or Devil which must represent their persons themselves being not at leisure to act any such part 8. But Misconceit and Prejudice though it may hinder the force of an Argument with those that are in that manner entangled yet Reason cannot but take place with them that are free To whom I dare appeal whether considering the aereal Vehicles of Souls which are common to them with other Genii so that whatever they are fancied to doe in their stead they may perform themselves as also how congruous it is that those persons that are most concerned when it is in their power should act in their own affairs as in detecting the Murtherer in disposing their estate in rebuking injurious Executors in visiting and counselling their Wives and Children in forewarning them of such and such courses with other matters of like sort to which you may adde the profession of the Spirit thus appearing of being the Soul of such an one as also the similitude of person and that all this adoe is in things very just and serious unfit for a Devil with that care and kindness to promote and as unfit for a good Genius it being below so noble a nature to tell a Lie especially when the affair may be as effectually transacted without it I say I dare appeal to any one whether all these things put together and rightly weighed the violence of prejudice not pulling down the ballance it will not be certainly carried for the present cause and whether any indifferent Judge ought not to conclude if these Stories that are so frequent every where and in all Ages concerning the Ghosts of men appearing be but true that it is true also that it is their Ghosts and that therefore the Souls of men subsist and act after they have left these earthly Bodies CHAP. XVII 1. The preeminence of Arguments drawn from Reason above those from Story 2. The first step toward a Demonstration of Reason that the Soul acts out of her Body for that she is an immaterial Substance separable therefrom 3. The second That the immediate instruments for Sense Motion and Organization of the Body are certain subtile and tenuious Spirits 4. A comparison betwixt the Soul in the Body and the AEreal Genii 5. Of the nature of Daemons from the account of Marcus the Eremite and how the Soul is presently such having once left this Body 6. An Objection concerning the Souls of Brutes to which is answered First by way of concession 7. Secondly by confuting the Arguments for the former concession 8. That there is no rational doubt at all of the Humane Soul acting after death 9. A further Argument of her activity out of this Body from her conflicts with it while she is in it 10. As also from the general hope and belief of all Nations that they shall live after death 1. BUT we proceed now to what is less subject to the evasions and misinterpretations of either the Profane or Superstitious For none but such as will profess themselves meer Brutes can cast off the Decrees and Conclusions of Philosophy and Reason though they think that in things of this nature they may with a great deal of applause and credit refuse the testimony of other mens senses if not of their own all Apparitions being with them nothing but the strong surprisals of Melancholy and Imagination But they cannot with that ease nor credit silence the Deductions of Reason by saying it is but a Fallacy unlesse they can shew the Sophisme which they cannot doe where it is not 2. To carry on therefore our present Argument in a rational way and by degrees we are first to consider That according as already has been clearly demonstrated there is a Substance in us which is ordinarily called the Soul really distinct from the Body for otherwise how can it be a Substance And therefore it is really and locally separable from the Body Which is a very considerable step towards what we aim at 3. In the next place we are to take notice That the immediate Instrument of the Soul are those tenuious and aereal particles which they ordinarily call the Spirits that these are they by which the Soul hears sees feels imagines remembers reasons and by moving which or at least directing their motion she moves likewise the Body and by using them or some subtile Matter like them she either compleats or at least contributes to the Bodies Organization For that the Soul should be the Vital Architect of her own house that close connexion and sure possession she is to have of it distinct and secure from the invasion of any other particular Soul seems no slight Argument And yet that while she is exercising that Faculty she may have a more then ordinary Union or Implication with the Spirit of Nature or the Soul of the World so far forth as it is Plastick seems not unreasonable and therefore is asserted by Plotinus and may justly be suspected to be true if we attend to the prodigious effects of the Mothers Imagination derived upon the Infant which sometimes are so very great that unless she raised the Spirit of Nature into consent they might well seem to exceed the power of any Cause I shall abstain from producing any Examples till the proper place in the mean time I hope I may be excused from any rashness in this assignation of the cause of those many and various Signatures found in Nature so plainly pointing at such a Principle in the World as I have intimated before 4. But to return and cast our eye upon the Subject in hand It appears from the two precedent Conclusions that the Soul considered as invested immediately with this tenuious Matter we speak of which is her inward Vehicle has very little more difference from the aereal Genii then a man in a Prison from one that is free The one can onely see and suck air through the Grates of the Prison and must be annoyed with all the stench and unwholsome fumes of that sad habitation whenas the other may walk and take the fresh air where he finds it most commodious and agreeable This difference there is betwixt the Genii and an incorporated Soul The Soul as a man faln into a deep pit who can have no better Water nor Air nor no longer enjoyment of the Sun and his chearful light and warmth then the measure and quality of the pit will permit him so she once immured
things I say are beyond the powers of Matter I have fully enough declared proved in a large Letter of mine to V. C. and therefore that I may not actum agere shall forbear speaking any farther thereof in this place To which you may adde that meer corporeal motion in Matter without any other guide would never so much as produce a round Sun or Star of which figure notwithstanding Des-Cartes acknowledges them to be But my reasons why it cannot be effected by the simple Mechanical powers of Matter I have particularly set down in my Letters to that excellent Philosopher CHAP. XIII 1. That the Descent of heavy Bodies argues the existence of the Spirit of Nature because else they would either hang in the Aire as they are placed 2. Or would be diverted from a perpendicular as they fall near a Plate of Metall set stooping 3. That the endeavour of the AEther or Aire from the Centre to the Circumference is not the cause of Gravity against Mr. Hobbs 4. A full confutation of Mr. Hobbs his Opinion 5. An ocular Demonstration of the absurd consequence thereof 6. An absolute Demonstration that Gravity cannot be the effect of meer Mechanical powers 7. The Latitude of the operations of the Spirit of Nature how large and where bounded 8. The reason of its name 9. It s grand office of transmitting Souls into rightly-prepared Matter 1. AND a farther confirmation that I am not mistaken therein is what we daily here experience upon Earth which is the descending of heavy Bodies as we call them Concerning the motion whereof I agree with Des-Cartes in the assignation of the immediate corporeal cause to wit the AEtherial matter which is so plentifully in the Air over it is in grosser Bodies but withall doe vehemently surmise that there must be some immaterial cause such as we call the Spirit of Nature or Inferiour Soule of the World that must direct the motions of the AEtherial particles to act upon these grosser Bodies to drive them towards the Earth For that surplusage of Agitation of the globular particles of the AEther above what they spend in turning the Earth about is carried every way indifferently according to his own concession by which motion the drops of liquors are formed into round figures as he ingeniously concludes From whence it is apparent that a bullet of iron silver or gold placed in the aire is equally assalted on all sides by the occursion of these aethereal particles and therefore will be moved no more downwards then upwards but hang in aequilibrio as a piece of Cork rests on the water where there is neither winde nor stream but is equally plaied against by the particles of water on all sides 3. Nor can the endeavour of the celestial Matter from the centre to the circumference take place here For besides that Des-Cartes the profoundest Master of Mechanicks has declin'd that way himself though Mr. Hobbs has taken it up it would follow that near the Poles of the Earth there would be no descent of heavy Bodies at all and in the very Clime we live in none perpendicular To say nothing how this way will not salve the union of that great Water that adheres to the body of the Moon 6. Adde unto all this that if the motion of gross Bodies were according to meer Mechanical laws a Bullet suppose of Lead or Gold cast up into the aire would never descend again but would persist in a rectilinear motion For it being farre more solid then so much Aire AEther put together as would fill its place and being moved with no less swiftness then that wherewith the Earth is carried about in twenty four hours it must needs break out in a straight line through the thin aire and never return again to the Earth but get away as a Comet does out of a Vortex And that de facto a Canon Bullet has been shot so high that it never fell back again upon the ground Des-Cartes does admit of as a true experiment Of which for my own part I can imagine no other unexceptionable reason but that at a certain distance the Spirit of Nature in some regards leaves the motion of Matter to the pure laws of Mechanicks but within other bounds checks it whence it is that the Water does not swill out of the Moon 7. Now if the pure Mechanick powers in Matter and Corporeal motion will not amount to so simple a Phaenomenon as the falling of a stone to the Earth how shall we hope they will be the adaequate cause of sundry sorts of Plants and other things that have farre more artifice and curiosity then the direct descent of a stone to the ground Nor are we beaten back again by this discovery into that dotage of the confounded Schools who have indued almost every different Object of our Senses with a distinct Substantial form and then puzzle themselves with endless scrupulosities about the generation corruption and mixtion of them For I affirm with Des-Cartes that nothing affects our Senses but such variations of Matter as are made by difference of Motion Figure Situation of parts c. but I dissent from him in this in that I hold it is not meer and pure mechanical motion that causes all these sensible Modifications in Matter but that many times the immediate Director thereof is this Spirit of Nature I speak of one and the same every where and acting alwaies alike upon like occasions as a clear-minded man and of a solid judgment gives alwaies the same verdict in the same circumstances For this Spirit of Nature intermedling with the efformation of the Foetus of Animals as I have already shewn more then once where notwithstanding there seems not so much need there being in them a more particular Agent for that purpose 't is exceeding rational that all Plants and Flowers of all sorts in which we have no argument to prove there is any particular Souls should be the effects of this Universal Soule of the World Which Hypothesis besides that it is most reasonable in it self according to that ordinary Axiome Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora is also very serviceable for the preventing many hard Problems about the Divisibility of the Soules of Plants their Transmutations into other Species the growing of Slips and the like For there is one Soule ready every where to pursue the advantages of prepared Matter Which is the common and onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of all Plantal appearances or of whatever other Phaenomena there be greater or smaller that exceed the pure Mechanical powers of Matter We except onely Men and Beasts who having all of them the capacity of some sort of enjoyments or other it was fit they should have particular Souls for the multiplying of the sense of those enjoyments which the transcendent Wisdome of the Creatour has contrived 8. I have now plainly enough set down what I mean by the Spirit of