speculate or understand without Phantasms and therefore it is not likely that the soul is a distinct substance and separable from the body For the ground hereof is false viz that there is no Intellection but what is either direct Imagination or done by Imagination as we have formerly proved and that with no sparing hand so that we need not here repeat it Nor had I here remembred this Argument of Aristotle but that this you now urge is very neer of kin thereunto as to its force and importance and so put me in mind of it afresh Lucretius An Eighth Objection may be made from hence that the Soul being once expired the body soon corrupts stinks and resolves to dust I say expired or like a vapour exhaled through the conduits and pores of the body and therefore so divided into small portions or particles as that in that very Egression or Expiration it must be wholly comparated to Dispersion and what is capable of such dispersion is capable of totall dissolution Athanasius You might well Lucretius have spared yourself and me the trouble of this impertinent objection had you thought my Answer to your Fifth worthy your memory For since you could not then deny that the soul as Incorporeal is diffused through the whole body and therefore may issue out of it intire and unimpaired as possessing no place and in that respect as capable of passing through the solid and compacted parts as through the conduits and pores why should you now resume that gross conception of the Souls expiring from the body like a vapour or exhalation And as for the Putrefaction of the Body after the Soul hath withdrawn itself from it though it nothing at all concern the buisiness in hand I say the Cause thereof is the defect of that vital Agitation of the Heart Blood and spirits by which the Humours most prone to putrifaction were partly kept from subsiding and fermenting and partly so extenuated as to be discussed and expelled Lucretius A Ninth from hence that in Lipothymies or swooning fits the vigour of the Soul is so much abated and brought low as that it would be totally dissolved and extinguished in case the Causes of those its Failings or Dejections were yet more violent as frequently they are and then they cause sudden death Athanasius Here you recur to the Symptomes of bodily Diseases again but I wish I could as easily remove them from the body as you from defending the Mortality of the Soul by any considerations drawn from them and their most fatal effects For as to Lipothymies which according to the Etymologie of the word you call Failings of the Soul they are in truth only Failings of the Heart or vital influence arising from the preclusion or stopping of those passages ordained for the continual transmission of vital Spirits which as servants the Soul makes use of to Life Sense and Motion And therefore reflecting upon what I have already said it is obvious to conceive that the whole Soul being diffused through the whole body all the failing in Swooning fits doth fall not upon her Self but upon the Vital Organs which at that time are rendred unfit for the uses and actions to which they were framed and accommodated And if the Causes of such Failings should chance to be so violent as to induce suddain death then the Soul indeed would and must wholly depart yet not by reason of any dissolution of its substance or exceeding imbecility in it self but only for want of those Dispositions in the Organs of life by which she was enabled to enliven the body And here I could mind you of a certain sort of Lypothymies that happen in Ecstasies of some Holy men when the Soul being transported with the superlative beauty and excellency of Divine Objects in abstracted contemplations doth so much neglect her inferior functions as that the body all that while seems senselesse and livelesse And yet this an argument rather of the strength of the Soul than of any Failing or Defection in it self I could also insist upon this that in sleep there is a kind of Defection of the influence of the Soul upon her corporeal Organs especially those inservient to Sense and Motion and yet the Soul is then most her self as Cyrus long since observed in one of Xenophons Orations in these most elegant words Dormientium Animi maximè declarant Divinitatem suam multa enim eum remissi ac liberi sunt futura prospiciunt ex quo intelligitur quales futuri sint cum se planè corporis vinculis relaxaverint But the Objection being otherwise refuted doth require neither Lucretius Experience teacheth that no man when dying findeth his Soul to depart out of his body whole and at once but rather to fail by degrees within his breast just as he doth his Sense in each proper Organ Which he would not do in case his Soul took her flight whole and intire out of his breast as a bird out of a Cage and therefore it is probable that the Soul being dissolved at the instant of death is breathed out in dispersed Atoms together with the Aer expired from the Lungs Athanasius You must needs be streightned for Objections Lucretius when you fly to uncertain Experiments and incompetent conceptions of vulgar heads and therefore I hope you cannot much longer hold out against truth I say to uncertain experiments because since it is impossible that any man in the extream moment of life wherein his Soul ceaseth to be either in his breast or any other part of his body should say to the standers by Now I am sensible of the egresse or flight of my Soul and I perceive how it departs because while he is able to speak or be sensible of any thing the Soul is still in the body and at the instant of its departure the Speech all Sense fail for ever The experience you alleage is uncertain and so no experience at all To incompetent Conceptions of vulgar heads because the common people not being able to understand the nature of an Incorporeal and how possessing no place no body can hinder its passage or trajection have a certain grosse apprehension that the Soul must issue out of the breast the same way that the breath doth out of the lungs And as for its Dispersion into Atoms you do ill to suppose it to be Corporeal when you have been so often beaten from that starting hole These Impertinences are much below so great a wit as yours Lucretius and I should very much wonder how you could fall upon them but that I ascribe it to your present humour of Contradiction which doth many times transport even wise men themselves to gross extravagancies Lucretius If the Soul were Immortal and conscious of its Immortality as you have affirmed certainly it would not grieve to leave the body which is rather its prison than delightful Mansion but rather rejoyce to be set at liberty and exult as a snake doth to
like conditions of Matter Truth is I have often heard among your soaring and long-winged Wits of Abstracted and Unbodied Notions and have somtimes perplexed my mind and almost crackt the membranes of my brain in striving how to comprehend them And yet I alwaies found my Phansy so inseparably conjoined to my Intellect as if they were both one and the same Faculty Nor am I yet able to distinguish betwixt my Imagination and Intellection And when once you shall have satisfied me of a reall Difference betwixt them I shall soon confesse you have gone very near the Demonstration of the Souls Immortality Because if the operations of the Intellect be clearly distinct from those of the Phansy which is a Corporeal Faculty and therefore limited to the perception and representation of only Corporeal Natures It will almost follow that the Intellect which is capable of knowing Incorporeals is a substance clearly distinct from the body and so Immaterial since different effects must have different Causes And as for your other Postulate viz. the exemption of my mind from contrary prejudice This also is what I should expect from the efficacy of your intended Arguments For as I told you before I believe the Immortality of the Soul but cannot perswade my self of the possibility of its Demonstration by any other but Divine reasons And it must be your work to convince me of the error of that perswasion Neverthelesse I will assure you of my best Attention and that I come not with a resolution not to be satisfied Athanasius Dear Sir have patience a while and you shall soon perceive both the Necessity and Equity of what I require And in the mean time do not take occasion to anticipate my Notions but leave me to deliver them in their due places and order Lucretius I shall punctually observe your commands and therefore if you think fit immediately addresse your self to your Demonstration Athanasius First it will be convenient in order to the prevention of all Equivocation and Logomachy that may arise from the various use of the word Soul that we insist a little on the examination of that vulgar Opinion which admitteth a real distinction betwixt Animus and Anima the Mind and the Soul In regard it seems to be the very same according to which many Doctors of the Church have conceived the Soul to have Two Parts a Superior and Inferior the one being the Mind Intellect or Reason the other comprehending the Sense Appetite Natural and Brutish There are you know many eminent men as well Theologues as Philosophers who as they hold Man to be composed of two parts a Soul and a Body so do they conceive that his soul is likewise composed of a twofold substance the one Incorporeal or Immaterial immediately created by God and infused into the body at the instant of its Empsychosis or first Animation in the Mothers Womb The other Corporeall or Material originally contained in the Parents Seed and derived ex traduce from the Seminalities of Male and Female commixed in coition which is as it were the Medium or Disposition by the intermediate nature whereof the Diviner part is conjoined and united to the Elementary or Body And this Opinion they ground chieflly upon that speech of the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I perceive a Law in my members warring against the Law of my Mind c. For say they since it is impossible that one Simple Essence or thing should war against or have contrariety to it self from this Repugnancy betwixt the Sense and the Mind or Reason it seems necessarily consequent that the Sensitive and Rational Soul are things essentially different each from other Whereunto they superadd also that unlesse this Distinction be admitted we can never well understand how Man as a living Creature can be said to be in one part little lower than the Angels and in another to be like the Horse or Mule that have no understanding How in respect of one part he is made after the Image of God and in respect of another he is compared to the Beasts that perish How in one respect he acknowledgeth God to be his Author and Principle and in another he owns his production upon his Parents How in one relation he is said to be Immortall and in another subject to death equally with the smallest worme Notwithstanding it is not either the Authority or Arguments of these Men that seem prevalent enough to bring me to be of their persuasion For as to their Authority I could thereunto oppose that of some Fathers yea and Councils who not onely reprehend but condemne all such as make a duality of Souls in man were not the thing already well known to you However suffer me to put you in mind that the pious and learned Conimbricenses who certainly have most profoundly and judiciously of all others handled this Question though they proceed not so far as to censure this conceipt to be Hereticall as some others before them had don yet they expressy declare their Dissent from it And as for their Reasons alledged I thinke them likewise insufficient For all that Psychomachy or intestine Conflicts which these men imagine to be betwixt the inferior part of the soul which is called the sensitive and the superior called the Rational or betwixt the Natural Appetites and the Will doe arise onely from the repugnancy or contrariety which is between those motions of the spirits which are on one side caused by the senses affected by externall objects and those motions of the spirits which on the other side are caused by the will after the soul hath deliberated upon their conveniency and utility And in truth each individuall man hath one and onely one soul in which is no variety of parts that which is the Sensitive is also the Rationall and all her Appetites are absolute Volitions The cause of these mens error seems to be this that they could not well distinguish the Functions proper to the soul from the Functions proper to the body to which alone we ought in right to ascribe whatever we observe in our selves to be repugnant to our Reason So that in Man there is no other Contract or Contrariety of Affections but what consisteth in the contrary motions caused by the spirits and purer part of the blood in that part of the body in which as in its principall and more immediate organ the soul is enthroned and exerciseth her faculties whether that be the Plexus Choroides in the brain as most Physicians conceive or the Heart as the Scripture seems to intimate or the Glandula pinealis in the centre of the brain as Des Cartes affirmeth or any other part whatsoever one of these motions arising from the determination of the spirits by the will one way and the other from the determination of them by the corporeal Appetite another way And hence it comes often to pass that these impulses being contrary each to other the stronger doth impede and
countermand the effect of the weaker Nor is it difficult to distinguish these two kinds of impulses or motions made by the mediation of the spirits upon the principal sensory or chief seat of the soul. Forasmuch as some of them represent to the soul the Images of objects either at that time moving the senses or the impressions formerly made and remaining in the brain but offer no force or violence to it so far as to engage the will toward their prosecution and others prove so effectual as to dispose the will accordingly as may be observed in all those which produce passions or such motions in the body as usually accompany passions As for the former though they often impede the actions of the soul and are againe as often impeded and suppressed by them yet because they are not directly opposite each to other we can observe no conflict or wrestling betwixt them as we may betwixt the latter sort of Motions and acts of the will or Volitions that oppose them as for example betwixt that impulse by which the principall organ of the soul is disposed to affect her with the cupidity or desire of any one particular object and that by which the will counterdisposeth her to an aversation from or avoydance of the same And this Conflict chiefly demonstrate thits selfe hereby that the will being not able to excite passions directly and immediately is constrained to cast about and use a kind of art in order thereunto and to apply it selfe to the consideration of several things successively or one after another whereupon it comes to passe that if any one of those things occurring chance to be prevalent enough to change the course or current of the spirits at that instant yet another that followes next after it be not powerfull enough to second the former in that change the spirits then immediately againe resume their first course or motion the precedent disposition in the nerves heart and blood being not yet altered and thereupon the soul perceives her selfe to be impelled to pursue and avoid the same object almost in one and the same moment And this alone was that which gave occasion to men to imagine Two Distinct and mutually repugnant Powers or Faculties in the soul. Nevertheless we may conceive another sort of Conflict consisting in this that many times the same cause which exciteth a passion in the soul doth even in the same moment excite also in the body certaine motions to which the soul doth not at all conduce and which she suppresseth or at least indeavours to suppress so soon as she observes them to be begun For instance whatsoever causeth Feare doth at the same instant cause also the spirits to flow into those muscles which serve to move the thighs and legges to flight or avoidance of the terrible object but if the Will suddainly rise up and determine to exercise the vertue of Fortitude and oppose the danger threatned the soul then giveth check to that motion of the spirits and converts them to the heart and armes the better to make resistance And here I ask leave to make a short Digression while with the excellent Des Cartes I observe to you that it is from the Event of these inward Conflicts by which a man may come to understand the strength or weakness of his own soul. For such persons who have their wills sufficiently strong to subdue passions and countermand those suddain motions in the body which accompany the passions are without doubt endowed with Noble and Generous Souls And those who have their wills subject to the impetuosity of passions and cannot check the motions of the spirits resulting from them must be men of abject effeminate and pusillanimous ones Not that every man can make this Experiment of himselfe as to Weaknesse or Fortitude because many and indeed most men come to these Duells armed not with the true and proper weapons of the mind but with false ones borrowed from some contrary Affection so that the conflict may seem to be rather betwixt two opposite Passions than betwixt the Will and either of them and the Will may be said to follow the fortune of the conquering passion rather than to be it selfe the conquerour By the true and proper weapons of the Mind I meane certaine right and firme judgments concerning the knowledge of Good and evill according to which it hath decreed to regulate it self in all the actions and occurrences of life And certainly of all Souls those are the most weak and feminine which have not their wills thus determined to follow certaine settled Judgements but suffer them to be drawn aside by present Affections which being many times contrary one to another and equally prevalent counter-incline the Will alternately and so keep it on the rack of suspence Thus when Feare representeth Death as the worst of evils and which cannot be otherwise avoided but by flight if on the other side Ambition step in and represent the infamy of flight as an Evill worse then Death these two contrary Affections variously agitate and distract the Will and by putting it to a long conflict and irresolution render the soul most servile and miserable Now from this consideration it is manifest that there is no such necessity as hath been imagined of allowing a distinction of the soul into Animum and Animam or making the Reasonable soul and the Sensitive two distinct beings in order to the explanation of that Psychomachy or Contest betwixt Reason and Sense or the Superior and Inferior Faculties of which the Apostle complained and indeed which every man feels within himselfe all that repugnancy consisting in a Contrariety not of the soul to it selfe which in a Simple Essence is impossible but onely of the Motions of the spirits caused by the Senses on one side and those caused by the Will on the other as hath been declared And as for the other Reasons that remaine what I have now said may be easily extended to the solution of them also for that Man is composed of a Reasonable Soul and a Body is sufficient to our understanding him to be in one respect little lower than the Angells made after the Image of God and Immortall and in another like the Horse and Mule that have no understanding and subject to death equally with the beasts that perish Isodicastes By your favour good Athanasius You were saying even now that there were some Fathers and Councils who condemned all such as maintained a Duality of Souls in Man But if I am not mistaken that condemnation doth cheifly concern the Maniches who held two distinct Souls in every man the one derived from an evill Principle and so contaminated with the tincture of Vices the other immaculate pure and having its origine immediately from God yea being a certain Particle of the Divine Essence it self And perhaps it may be extended also to the Platonist and Averrhoist who affirm the Ratitional Soul not to be the Forma informans
from the impairment of the body by old age than is usually observed to arise pro tempore from a fit of drunkennesse or some disease of the brain For as when the malignity of the Spirits of Wine is overcome by sleep and dispelled by sweat or the violence of a disease possessing the brain or seat of reason is abated a man doth no longer suffer a delirium but returns to the clear use of his reasoning Faculty as before his head was disordered So if the Brain and Phansy were youthfully affected in an old man the Soul would no longer seem to doat but reason as perfectly as ever before in the vigour and flourishing state of youth From whence it is evident that whatever of change men have thought to be in the Soul by reason of that great decay generally attending old age is not really in the Soul but only in the Imagination and the Organ thereof which is not so well disposed as in the vigour of life And this might be conveniently explained by the similitude of a Scribe who cannot write so smooth and fine a hand with an old and blunted pen as with a new and sharp one But the thing is of it self too clear to need the illustration of Comparisons And this may suffice to dissolve your mighty Argument objected Lucretius My SECOND Argument is desumed from hence that the Soul is not only distempered and misaffected with diseases of her owne but infected and touch't also by those of the body and what is capable of disease or misaffection either protopathically or sympathically is doubtless capable of dissolution This you may remember was long since urged by Panaetius of Epicurus sect for Cicero primo Tuscul. speaking of him saith alteram autem rationem affert nihil esse quod dole at quin id aegrum esse quoque possit quod autem in morbum cadat id etiam interiturum dolere autem Animos ergo etiam interire Athanasius As for such Diseases of the body which you suppose extend to the discomposure of the Soul by way of sympathy as particulary the Phrensy Madnesse Hypochondriacall Melancholy the Lethargy Hydrophobia and others which work upon the brain and perturb the Animal Faculties the same Answer will serve to exempt the Soul from suffering any detriment from them which I just now alleaged against her decay in old age For though in truth the Mind cannot exercise its proper functions duely and rightly in fits of Delirium the Phrensy and the like nor at all in Lethargies and Apoplexies yet this ought not to be ascribed to any depravation or change in the substance of the Mind itself but only to an indisposition in the Phansy and Animal Organs And as for Passions of Grief Fear Remorse c. which are reputed the proper Diseases of the Mind in the first place we may derive our Answer concerning them from the place of Aristotle newly cited For he there subjoyns Amores odium alia passiones esse non intellectûs sed corporis ipsum habentis esse enim fortè Intellectum aliquid divinum passionis expers By which his meaning is that the proper Function of the Intellect is to understand and reason though he was pleased to reckon Cogitation among the Passions and that all Passions belong to the Appetite either Concupiscible or Irascible which is a Corporeal Faculty For though Passion be posterior to Cognition and dependent thereupon so that it may seem to be received in the subject to which Cognition doth belong that is to the Mind nevertheless because the Mind while resident in the body doth make use of corporeal Images pre-admitted into the Imagination and in the mean while the Phansy in imagining what things are doth co-operate together with the Mind and the motion of the Corporeal or Sensitive Faculty followeth after the perception of objects by the Phansy thence it comes that the whole Commotion or Passion doth belong to the Appetite and Body the Mind all that while remain free and unmoved after the same manner as a Master and servant travelling together the servant carries the burden and the Master goes light and free and unconcerned in the weight and trouble thereof But forasmuch as we must admit a certain Appetite properly competent to the Soul itself viz. the Rational Appetite from the name of its action usually denominated the Will by which we find ourselves secretly inclined and carried towards things Honest and Divine and which ought to remain in the Soul even after death since it must then be sensible either of pleasure in the state of felicity or of pain in the state of misery therefore I confess we cannot deny but there are some certain Motions in the Soul itself which in respect of the analogy they seem to hold to those of the sensual or Corporeal Appetite and that we cannot otherwise express them may well enough be called Passions yet these are not to be conceived to arise from any dilatation compression solution of continuity and the like violent motions that might adferr any harme or detriment to the substance of the Soul Nor indeed ought this to seem strange or difficult in a thing that is Incorporeal since even among Corporeals we observe some that have a substance unalterable and so inconsumable by the most violent motions in Nature as Gold Amianthus and the like and that Aristotle makes the substance of Heavenly bodies such as that it cannot be altered heated or dissolved by the heat of the Sun as all sublunary bodies are Lucretius What think you then Athanasius of Drunkeness wherein both the Rational Faculty is highly perturbed and the Motive as much enfeebled neither of which could be if the Soul did not suffer from the violence of the wine and what is capable of suffering such damage from external causes cannot be incapable of totall dissolution from the same in case their force and activity become more intense Therefore the soul is Mortal Athanasius Why truly I think this Argument as light and trivial as your former and that the same solution will serve to both For it is not the Mind which is overwhelmed with the deluge of Wine but the brain and seat or instrument of the Phansy whose images being beclouded and confused by the fumes or spirits of the wine brought thither by the arteries it is impossible the Mind should make use of them with that clearness and distinction as when they were pure and in order And as for that general weakness which remaines for a while after the drunken fit is over in all the members of the body this is not to be referred to the Mind neither but to the Motive-Faculty whose instruments and principally the Nerves are then misaffected and in a manner relaxed so as they become indisposed to the regiment of the Mind The best Lutenist in the world you know cannot play a tune upon a Lute whose strings are relaxed by moisture or otherwise altered from their requisite