Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	act_n	power_n	will_n	1,439	5	6.6180	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65786	An exclusion of scepticks from all title to dispute being an answer to The vanity of dogmatizing / by Thomas White.	White, Thomas, 1593-1676.	1665 (1665)	Wing W1824; ESTC R11142	42,212	90

saw painted on its foreside And in my judgment he had said rarely had he stopt here but in his following Questions he shews his deficiency even in this For he asks farther whence the Soul comes and how t is united to the Body He is therefore most manifestly detected to think that the Soul lying hid in the Body is of it self a certain substance which may directly be made come and be joined to another thing whence he terms it subsistence which doubtless denotes a Thing and Substance Now that this is a most important error in Philosophy none can doubt that 's able to discern the opposition of One and Many For t is plain that either a Man is not a Thing or else that his Soul and Body are not two Things if one thing cannot at once be many nor many one Nor am I scar'd with the distinction which the Boys that gabble Philosophy have always ready in their Budget of a perfect and imperfect thing which saies just nothing unless imperfect signifie to which somewhat is wanting to make it a thing which suppos'd an imperfect thing is not a thing and the distinction vanishes Otherwise the same cannot be one thing and more things Wherefore either a Man is not a Thing but a Pair of Things consisting of an Intelligence and a Beast or his Soul and Body are not two things 2. When therefore he asks Whence comes the Soul it must be answered with a question Whether he doubts whence the man comes For if whilst the man lives there be but one only thing which is call'd the Man 't is he alone can have come and he beats the wind that enquires whence the Soul comes Nor am I shaken with the Authority of our Fore-fathers though never so Reverend I mean not of those who profess themselvs unable to grapple with the Question for these deliver the Candle into the hands of Posterity advising them to pursue on the same Race that it may be seen whether any thing purer occur to them than to themselves ready to Patronize whoever shall clear the Truth But their opposition I resist who clamor 't is the Faith of all Churches that Rational Souls are fram'd by God For now I 'm accustom'd to it to distinguish between what 's due to the sincerity of Faith and what to Scholastical subtilty If I attribute the Making of Man as he 's Intellectual to the singular power and operation of God I have submitted my self to the keys of the Churches Doctrine and subscrib'd to the Tradition of the Saints But whether that action which is the Generation of Man consists of two actual parts or be but one alone by more notions equivalent to more really-distinct actions is a purely speculative Question belonging to the Schools And so it must be said that one Thing a Man equivalent to a Beast and an Intelligence is brought into existence by one action equivalent to two the Generation of an Animal and the Creation of an Intelligence 3. By this truth we are led to the evident solution of the two following knots the econd being how the Body and Soul are united Which 't is plain is herein faulty that it supposes two things to be united existing either before the Compound or not destroyd but ty'd together in it which is clearly false not only out of the ' fore-declared Truth but also out the definition of a Part. For Parts are call'd such whereof by a Motion call'd Composition one thing is made or into which what was one is resolv'd by Division or destruction of the Unity Now Unity not Union is the form of what is One And in that which is One to seek for the colligation or cement is to seek by what the same is made the same The same Error runs through the following Difficulty which laments that 't is unknown how the soul moves the Body Which is utterly knock'd on the head by denying the soul moves the Body For true it is that one animated Member moves another but not that any substance which is a pure soul moves immediately any Member in which the soul is not I appeal to other Animals in which there 's frankly denied to be a Soul independent of the Body and I desire to have shewn me what motion there is in man which is not in them I confess freely that one Member the Brain especially moves the rest after another manner in Man than in other Animals and this by reason of the difference in their Souls but first it ought to be made evident by experiments that a Humane Soul without the help of the Body or some Member acting together with it moves another Member before we are to enquire into the manner how this either is or can be done 4. The last darkness which he bemoans in this Chapter lyes in our ignorance of that Motion whereby the spirits are deriv'd out of the brain into the fit Nerves for the Animal's natural Action And if indeed the Objection brandish an Argument common to all Animals I should soon quit the field for I confess my self not so skilful in Anatomy that I can lay before the eyes why from the Motion of Anger boyling in the heart the spirits should start into those Muscles by whose streining the Animal is carry'd towards its Adversaries and from the Motion of Fear spirits flow into the opposite Muscles by which the Animal flies fromwards them whereas they in a manner add strength to and enforce both alike Yet I make no question at all but by force of the Brain 's Motion caus'd by the motion of the heart it comes to pass that the entrance into one sort of Channels are shut others opn'd and that thence comes this admirable and as-yet-not-sufficiently-seen-through direction of the spirits But the Authors seems to make Mans case proper to himself alledging Will and perhaps Election to be as it were the first Author of this direction Still therefore he slips into the same Error For first he should demonstrate some act of the will without some either precedent or concomitant Motion of the Heart which when t is violent we call Passion when we endeavour at any thing Desire or Flight or some other such like we stile it But if there be no such then the cause of this direction is purely Mechanical as he calls it and not any certain inexplicable power Now that there cannot possibly be any such exempt act of the will 't is clear enough to them who allow ther 's no knowledge without a beat of Phansies For Phansies cannot chuse but both be stird themselves and stir others by the usual ways of Nature By Motions therefore deriv'd from the heart whether in Man or in Animals all Motions whether Natural or Free Universally are perform'd and by consequence are subject to the contemplation and scrutiny of Philosophy and acurate Mechanicks 5. The fourth Chapter objects that the Natures of Sensation and Memory are inexplicable As to the former

first he acknowledges the substance of sensation is seated in the Brain alone Then he inclines to Des Cartes's fantastical conjecture shall I call it or deviation from the manifest footsteps of Nature about Motion's being brought down from the Heav'ns to our Eyes through the continuedness of a very thin Ether But because he esteems Aristotle's conceits too not incredible I may be excus'd from that speculation At length therefore he falls again into the old Error enquiring how corporeal things can have any force upon a naked Spirit He supposes therefore the Soul in the Body to be a kind of thing not the form or affection of the thing Man and so is upon the same false haunt again nor needs repeating former discourses to beat him off it But left he should say nothing new he objects that by sense alone there 's no discerning the Quantities Distances Figures and Colours of things I wonder I must confess at these Objections from a curious and ingenious Man things so clearly explain'd demonstrated in Opticks Who is so ignorant that he knows not that bigger things at the same distance strike the eye in a more obtuse Angle and stronglier Who knows not that Figure if plain as objected to the eye is nothing else but Quantity more spacious or contracted this or that way but if it be a solid one and participate of the third dimension it borrows its variety from Distance Again that Distance is nothing else but a certain Magnitude spread between the Eye and the Object which if it be past judging of neither can the Eye attest the distance Lastly that Colour is nothing else but the confused figuration of a Superficies according to its parts undistinguisht to sense Whence it remains clear that the Eye needs no other Geometry for all these than what is necessary to judge of a magnitude from the variety of an Angle 6. His next pains is about Memory To shew the explication of that impossible he commemorates and rejects four waies of resolving it I must take another path than any of those First I must weaken this consequence that If any thing about Memory has not hitherto been explicated we must therefore make account it never will be or that 't is impossible to be explicated We must be aware too that alwaies some things will be unknown either because their trivialness merits not the pains of learning them or in that at length the bulk of things known will be grown so great that more will be burthensome to the understanding Now to complain of such like is to have forgot human shortness What therefore seems my task in this Queston is to bring into play those things which are already establisht and evident about memory and for those that are unknown to make an estimate whether some time or other they too will come or merit to be known First then 't is evident we must distinguish what is Memory and what Remembrance For Memory is only a Conserving of the impressions made by the objects whereby the Animal is rendred able to use them when he lists or needs But Remembrance is a certain Motion whereby that power of using the impressions is reduc'd into Act and Use. Concerning Memory therefore a reason is to be given both of its station or rest and of the causes or manner of its Motion and of both if I be not mistaken Nature and Experience offer evident footsteps for tracing them 7. In the first place that all things that move the sense have certain minute particles of their body shorn off as to the Touch Tast and Smell is too notorious to abide contest He that denyes the same force to the Light returning from the things to our Eyes must deny too that the Sun extracts exhalations from the Earth and Sea there being no other diversity in the operations but that the one is greater and stronger the other weaker and less Now that these Atoms get up to the Brain by the waftage of the Spirits that is a certain liquid and most subtil substance can scarce be denied by one never so pievish that 's but put in minde how Waters and Oyles are impregnated These Atoms therefore must of necessity strike not without some violence upon that part of the Brain whose being-struck causes perception Again that a stream or any thing liquid dasht against a resister should not leap back again is most clearly repugnant both to experience and reason And that a substance any thing viscuous in a viscuous vessel besides such as those are about the brain being repuls'd should not stick to any thing solid is equally impossible as also that a notable part of that stream should not cling together is against the Nature of gluyness The Walls therefore of the empty and hollow places of the Brain must of necessity be all hang'd and furnisht with little threads Conclude we then that through all the senses except Hearing the Animal is enabled by Atoms constantly sticking in it to make use again of the Impressions made by Objects In fine since sound is made by a collision of the Air 't is evident by Anatomy that it drives the Hammer of the Ear to beat upon the Anvil by which beat 't is not to be believ'd but certain particles must fly off and strike the Fancy the orderly storing up therefore of these is apt to constitute the Memory of sounds The structure then of Memory if I am not mistaken is rationally enough declared 8. I cannot see why the like track may not carry us to the explaining of the Symptoms of Remembrance too or why their Solution should be desparate For there 's nothing clearer than that the fore-explicated motion of the Atoms is set on work by a wind as it were For that Passion is a certain ebullition of Spirits reeking out of the heart t is visible even to the eies in Anger and Love and Bashfulness If we make inquisition what effect these motions have on the Fancy we experience that those Objects occur to the mind tumultuously and all on a heap as it were which solicite these Passions so hastily and in a huddle that they prevent mature weighing It appears therefore that the Atoms rouz'd from their places by such like vapours fly about the cognoscitive part in a kind of confused tumble If then there are certain winds and blasts which we call Motions of the appetitive faculty is it not plain that the cavities of the Brain will be brusht as it were and the Images sticking to the wals be moved to the place destin'd for attaining their effect And that these Atoms are carried neither meerly by chance nor yet in a certain order is evident by this that upon inquisition the things we seek for do not suddenly and perfectly occur which were a sign of election and yet manifestly such abundance of them suit to our purpose that t is clear they could not run thus without any industry at all As therefore