the causes and manner of their rotations as also the reasons of all the Planetary Phaenomena and of the Comets their nature and the causes of all their irregular appearings To these the knowledge of the intricate doctrine of motion the powers proportions and laws thereof is requisite And thus we are engaged in the objects of Geometry and Arithmetick yea the whole Mathematicks must be contributary and to them all Nature payes a subsidy Besides plants are partly material'd of water with which they are furnisht either from subterranean Fountains or the Clouds Now to have the true Theory of the former we must trace the nature of the Sea its origen and hereto its remarkable motions of flux and reflux This again directs us to the Moon and the rest of the Celestial faces The moisture that comes from the Clouds is drawn up in vapours To the Scientifical discernment of which we must know the nature and manner of that action their suspense in the middle region the qualities of that place and the causes and manner of their precipitating thence again and so the reason of the Sphaerical figure of the drops the causes of Windes Hail Snow Thunder Lightning with all other igneous appearances with the whole Physiology of Meteors must be enquired into And again 3 in our disquisition into the formal Causes the knowledge of the nature of colours is necessary to compleat the Science To be inform'd of this we must know what light is and light being effected by a motion on the Organs of sense 't will be a necessary requisite to understand the nature of our sensitive faculties and to them the essence of the soul and other spiritual subsistences The manner how it is materially united and how it is aware of corporeal motion The seat of sense and the place where 't is principally affected which cannot be known but by the Anatomy of our parts and the knowledge of their Mechanical structure And if further 4 we contemplate the end of this minute effect its principal final Cause being the glory of its Maker leads us into Divinity and for its subordinate as 't is design'd for alimental sustenance to living creatures and medicinal uses to man we are conducted into Zoography and the whole body of Physick Thus then to the knowledge of the most contemptible effect in nature 't is necessary to know the whole Syntax of Causes and their particular circumstances and modes of action Nay we know nothing till we know our selves which are the summary of all the world without us and the Index of the Creation Nor can we know our selves without the Physiology of corporeal Nature and the Metaphysicks of Souls and Angels So then every Science borrows from all the rest and we cannot attain any single one without the Encyclopaedy 5 The knowledge we have comes from our Senses and the Dogmatist can go no higher for the original of his certainty Now let the Sciolist tell me why things must needs be so as his individual senses represent them Is he sure that objects are not otherwise sensed by others then they are by him and why must his sense be the infallible Criterion It may be what is white to us is black to Negroes and our Angels to them are Fiends Diversity of constitution or other circumstances varies the sensation and to them of Iava Pepper is cold And though we agree in a common name yet it may be I have the same representation from yellow that another hath from green Thus two look upon an Alabaster Statue he call's it white and I assent to the appellation but how can I discover that his inward sense on 't is the same that mine is It may be Alabaster is represented to him as jet is to me and yet it is white to us both We accord in the name but it 's beyond our knowledge whether we do so in the conception answering it Yea the contrary is not without its probability For though the Images Motions or whatever else is the cause of sense may be alike as from the object yet may the representations be varyed according to the nature and quality of the Recipient That 's one thing to us looking through a tube which is another to our naked eyes The same things seem otherwise through a green glass then they do through a red Thus objects have a different appearance when the eye is violently any way distorted from that they have when our Organs are in their proper site and figure and some extraordinary alterations in the Brain duplicate that which is but a single object to our undistemper'd Sentient Thus that 's of one colour to us standing in one place which hath a contrary aspect in another as in those versatile representations in the neck of a Dove and folds of Scarlet And as great diversity might have been exemplified in the other senses but for brevity I omit them Now then since so many various circumstances concurre to every individual constitution and every mans senses differing as much from others in its figure colour site and infinite other particularities in the Organization as any one mans can from it self through diverse accidental variations it cannot well be suppos'd otherwise but that the conceptions convey'd by them must be as diverse Thus one mans eyes are more protuberant and swelling out anothers more sunk and depressed One mans bright and sparkling and as it were swimming in a subtile lucid moisture anothers more dull and heavy and destitute of that spirituous humidity The colour of mens eyes is various nor is there less diversity in their quantitative proportions And if we look further into the more inward constitution there 's more variety in the internal configurations than in the visible out-side For let us consider the different qualities of the Optick nerves humors tunicles and spirits the divers figurings of the brain the strings or filaments thereof their difference in tenuity and aptness for motion and as many other circumstances as there are individuals in humane nature all these are diversified according to the difference of each Crasis and are as unlike as our faces From these diversities in all likelyhood will arise as much difference in the manner of the reception of the Images and consequently as various sensations So then how objects are represented to my self I cannot be ignorant being conscious to mine own cogitations but in what manner they are received and what impresses they make upon the so differing organs of another he only knows that feels them There is an obvious an easie objection which I have sufficiently caveated against and with the considerate it will signifie no more then the inadvertency of the Objectors 'T will be thought by slight discerners a ridiculous Paradox that all men should not conceive of the objects of sense alike since their agreement in the appellation seems so strong an argument of the identity of the sentiment All for instance say that Snow is white and
the respective parts and how are they kept to their specifick uniformities If we attempt Mechanical solutions we shall never give an account why the Wood-cock doth not sometimes borrow colours of the Mag-pye why the Lilly doth not exchange with the Daysie or why it is not sometime painted with a blush of the Rose Can unguided matter keep it self to such exact conformities as not in the least spot to vary from the species That divers Limners at a distance without either copy or designe should draw the same Picture to an undistinguishable exactness both in form colour and features this is more conceivable then that matter which is so diversified both in quantity quality motion site and infinite other circumstances should frame it self so absolutely according to the Idea of its kind And though the fury of that Apelles who threw his Pencil in a desperate rage upon the Picture he had essayed to draw once casually effected those lively representations which his Art could not describe yet 't is not likely that one of a thousand such praecipitancies should be crowned with so an unexpected an issue For though blind matter might reach some elegancies in individual effects yet specifick conformities can be no unadvised productions but in greatest likelyhood are regulated by the immediate efficiency of some knowing agent which whether it be seminal Forms according to the Platonical Principles or what ever else we please to suppose the manner of its working is to us unknown or if these effects are meerly Mechanical yet to learn the method of such operations may be and hath indeed been ingeniously attempted but I think cannot be performed to the satisfaction of severer examination That all bodies both Animal Vegetable and Inanimate are form'd out of such particles of matter which by reason of their figures will not cohaere or lie together but in such an order as is necessary to such a specifical formation and that therein they naturally of themselves concurre and reside is a pretty conceit and there are experiments that credit it If after a decoction of hearbs in a Winter-night we expose the liquor to the frigid air we may observe in the morning under a crust of Ice the perfect appearance both in figure and colour of the Plants that were taken from it But if we break the aqueous Crystal those pretty images dis-appear and are presently dissolved Now these airy Vegetables are presumed to have been made by the reliques of these plantal emissions whose avolation was prevented by the condensed inclosure And therefore playing up and down for a while within their liquid prison they at last settle together in their natural order and the Atomes of each part finding out their proper place at length rest in their methodical Situation till by breaking the Ice they are disturbed and those counterfeit compositions are scatter'd into their first Indivisibles This Hypothesis may yet seem to receive further confirmation from the artificial resurrection of Plants from their ashes which Chymists are so well acquainted with And besides that Salt dissolved upon fixation returns to its affected cubes the regular figures of Minerals as the Hexagonal of Crystal the Hemi-sphaerical of the Fairy-stone the stellar figure of the stone Asteria and such like seem to look with probability upon this way of formation And I must needs say 't is handsomly conjectur'd But yet what those figures are that should be thus mechanically adapted to fall so unerringly into regular compositions is beyond our faculties to conceive or determine And how those heterogeneous atomes for such their figures are supposed should by themselves hit so exactly into their proper residence in the midst of such tumultuary motions cross thwartings and arietations of other particles especially when for one way of hitting right there are thousands of missing there 's no Hypothesis yet extant can resolve us And yet had heaven afforded that miracle of men the Illustrious Des-Cartes a longer day on earth we might have expected the utmost of what ingenuity could perform herein but his immature Fate hath unhappily disappointed us and prevented the most desirable Complement of his not to be equall'd Philosophy § 2. 2. It 's no less difficult to give an account how the Parts of the Matter of our Bodies are united For though superficial Enquirers may easily satisfie themselves by answering that it is done by muscles nerves and other like strings and ligaments which Nature hath destin'd to that office yet if we seek for an account how the parts of these do cohere we shall find the cause to be as latent as the effect of easie discovery Nothing with any shew of success hath yet appeared on the Philosophick Stage but the opinion of Des-Cartes that the Parts of Matter are united by Rest. Neither can I conceive how any thing can be substituted in its room more congruous to reason since Rest is most opposite to Motion the immediate cause of disunion But yet I cannot see how this can satisfie touching the almost indissolvible coherence of some bodies and the fragility and solubility of others For if the Union of the Parts consist only in Rest it would seem that a bagg of dust would be of as firm a consistence as that of Marble or Adamant a Bar of Iron will be as easily broken as a Tobacco-pipe and Bajazets Cage had been but a sorry Prison The Aegyptian Pyramids would have been sooner lost then the Names of them that built them and as easily blown away as those inverst ones of smoke If it be pretended for a difference that the parts of solid bodies are held together by hooks and angulous involutions I say this comes not home For the coherence of the parts of these hooks as hath been noted will be of as difficult a conception as the former And we must either suppose an infinite of them holding together on one another or at last come to parts that are united by a meer juxta-position Yea could we suppose the former yet the coherence of these would be like the hanging together of an infinite such of Dust which Hypothesis would spoil the Proverb and a rope of sand should be no more a phrase for Labour in vain For unless there be something upon which all the rest may depend for their cohesion the hanging of one by another will signifie no more then the mutual dependence of causes and effects in an infinite Series without a First the admission of which Atheism would applaud But yet to do the Master of Mechanicks right somewhat of more validity in the behalf of this Hypothesis may be assign'd Which is that the closeness and compactness of the Parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union For every thing continues in the condition wherein it is except something more powerful alter it And therefore the parts that rest close together must continue in the same relation to each other till some other body by motion disjoyn them
drawn down to this sediment of universal dreggs yet the thus impregnate spirit contracts a Verticity to objects above the Pole And like as in a falling Torch though the grosser Materials hasten to their Element yet the flame aspires and could it master the dulness of its load would carry it beyond the central activity of the Terraqueous Magnet Such souls justifie Aristotles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in allayed sense that title which the Stoicks give it of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If we say they are not in their bodies but their bodies in them we have the Authority of the divine Plato to vouch us And by the favour of an easie simile we may affirm them to be to the body as the light of a Candle to the gross and faeculent snuff which as it is not pent up in it so neither doth it partake of its stench and and impurity Thus as the Roman Oratour elegantly descants Erigimur latiores fieri videmur humana despicimus contemplantesque supera coelestia haec nostra ut exigua minima contemnimus And yet there 's an higher degree to which Philosophy sublimes us For as it teacheth a generous contempt of what the grovelling desires of creeping Mortals Idolize and dote on so it raiseth us to love and admire an Object that is as much above terrestrial as Infinity can make it If Plutarch may have credit the observation of Natures Harmony in the celestial motions was one of the first inducements to the belief of a God And a greater then he affirms that the visible things of the Creation declare him that made them What knowledge we have of them we have in a sense of their Authour His face cannot be beheld by Creature-Opticks without the allay of a reflexion and Nature is one of those mirrours that represents him to us And now the more we know of him the more we love him the more we are like him the more we admire him 'T is here that knowledge wonders and there 's an Admiration that 's not the Daughter of Ignorance This indeed stupidly gazeth at the unwonted effect But the Philosophick passion truly admires and adores the supreme Efficient The wonders of the Almighty are not seen but by those that go down into the deep The Heavens declare their Makers Glory and Philosophy theirs which by a grateful rebound returns to its Original source The twinkling spangles the Ornaments of the upper world lose their beauty and magnificence while they are but the objects of our narrow'd senses By them the half is not told us and Vulgar spectators see them but as a confused huddle of pety Illuminants But Philosophy doth right to those immense sphears and advantagiously represents their Glories both in the vastness of their proportions and regularity of their motions If we would see the wonders of the Globe we dwell in Philosophy must reare us above it The works of God speak forth his mighty praise A speech not understood but by those that know them The most Artful melody receives but little tribute of Honour from the gazing beasts it requires skill to relish it The most delicate musical accents of the Indians to us are but inarticulate hummings as questionless are ours to their otherwise tuned Organs Ignorance of the Notes and Proportions renders all Harmony unaffecting A gay Puppet pleaseth children more then the exactest piece of unaffected Art it requires some degrees of Perfection to admire what is truly perfect as it 's said to be an advance in Oratory to relish Cicero Indeed the unobservant Multitude may have some general confus'd apprehensions of a kind of beauty that guilds the outside frame of the Universe But they are Natures courser wares that lye on the stall expos'd to the transient view of every common Eye her choicer Riches are lock't up only for the sight of them that will buy at the expence of sweat and Oyl Yea and the visible Creation is far otherwise apprehended by the Philosophical Inquirer then the unintelligent Vulgar Thus the Physitian looks with another Eye on the Medicinal hearb then the grazing Oxe which swoops it in with the common grass and the Swine may see the Pearl which yet he values but with the ordinary muck it 's otherwise pris'd by the skilful Ieweller And from this last Article I think I may conclude the charge which hot-brain'd folly lays in against Philosophy that it leads to Irreligion frivolous and vain I dare say next after the divine Word it 's one of the best friends to Piety Neither is it any more justly accountable for the impious irregularities of some that have payd an homage to its shrine then Religion it self for the sinful extravagances both opinionative and practical of high pretenders to it It is a vulgar conceit that Philosophy holds a confederacy with Atheism it self but most injurious for nothing can better antidote us against it and they may as well say that Physitians are the only murtherers A Philosophick Atheist is as good sense as a Divine one and I dare say the Proverb Ubi tres Medici duo Athei is a scandal I think the Original of this conceit might be That the Students of Nature conscious to her more cryptick ways of working resolve many strange effects into the nearer efficiency of second causes which common Ignorance and Superstition attribute to the Immediate causality of the first thinking it to derogate from the Divine Power that any thing which is above their apprehensions should not be reckon'd above Natures activity though it be but his Instrument and works nothing but as impower'd from him Hence they violently declaim against all that will not acknowledge a Miracle in every extraordinary effect as setting Nature in the Throne of God and so it 's an easie step to say they deny him When as indeed Nature is but the chain of second causes and to suppose second causes without a first is beneath the Logick of Gotham Neither can they who to make their reproach of Philosophy more authentick alledge the Authority of an Apostle to conclude it vain upon any whit more reasonable terms make good their charge since this allegation stands in force but against its abuse corrupt sophistry or traditionary impositions which lurk'd under the mask of so serious a name At the worst the Text will never warrant an universal conclusion any more then that other where the Apostle speaks of silly women who yet are the most rigid urgers of this can justly blot the sex with an unexceptionable note of infamy Now what I have said here in this short Apology for Philosophy is not so strictly verifiable of any that I know as the Cartesian The entertainment of which among truly ingenuous unpossest Spirits renders an after-commendation superfluous and impertinent It would require a wit like its Authors to do it right in an Encomium The strict Rationality of the Hypothesis in the main and the critical coherence of its parts
A display of the Perfections of Innocence with a conjecture at the manner of Adams knowledge viz. that it was by the large extent of his Senses founded upon the supposition of the perfection of his Faculties and induc'd from two Philosophick principles OUr misery is not of yesterday but as antient as the first Criminal and the ignorance we are involved in almost coaeval with the humane nature not that we were made so by our God but our selves we were his creatures sin and misery were ours To make way for what follows we will go to the root of our antient happiness and now ruines that we may discover both what the Man was and what the Sinner is The Eternal Wisdome having made that Creature whose crown it was to be like his Maker enrich't him with those ennoblements which were worthy him that gave them and made no less for the benefit of their receiver then the glory of their Author And as the Primogenial light which at first was difused over the face of the unfashion'd Chaos was afterwards by Divine appointment gathered into the Sun and Stars and other lucid bodies which shine with an underived lustre so those scatter'd perfections which are divided among the several cantons of created beings were as it were constellated and summ'd up in this Epitome of the greater World MAN His then blisful injoyments anticipated the aspires to be like GODS being in a condition not to be added to as much as in desire and the unlikeness of it to our now miserable because Apostate state makes it almost as impossible to be conceiv'd as to be regain'd A condition which was envied by creatures that nature had plac't a sphaere above us and such as differ'd not much from glory and blessed immortality but in perpetuity and duration For since the most despicable and disregarded pieces of decay'd nature are so curiously wrought and adorned with such eminent signatures of Divine wisdome as speak it their Author and that after a curse brought upon a disorder'd Universe what think we was done unto him whom the King delighted to honour and what was the portion of Heâ—â—ens Favorite when Omniscience it self sat in Councel to furnish him with all those accomplishments which his specifick capacity could contain which questionless were as much above the Hyperbolies that fond Poetry bestowes upon its admired objects as their flatter'd beauties are really below them The most refined glories of subcoelestial excellencies are but more faint resemblances of these For all the powers and faculties of this copy of the Divinity this meddal of God were as perfect as beauty and harmony in Idea The soul was not clogg'd by the inactivity of its masse as ours nor hindered in its actings by the distemperature of indisposed organs Passions kept their place as servants of the higher powers and durst not arrogate the Throne as now no countermands came hence to repeal the decretals of the Regal faculties that Batrachomyomachia of one passion against an other and both against reason was yet unborn Man was never at odds with himself till he was at odds with the commands of his Maker There was no jarring or disharmony in the faculties till sin untun'd them He could no sooner say to one power go but it went nor to another do this but it did it Even the senses the Souls windows were without any spot or opacity to liken them to the purest Crystal were to debase them by the comparison for their acumen and strength depending on the delicacy and apt disposure of the organs and spirits by which outward motions are conveyed to the judgement-seat of the Soul those of Innocence must needs infinitely more transcend ours then the senses of sprightful youth doth them of frozen decrepit age Adam needed no Spectacles The acuteness of his natural Opticks if conjecture may have credit shew'd him much of the Coelestial magnificence and bravery without a Galilaeo's tube And 't is most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much of the upper World as we with all the advantages of art It may be 't was as absurd even in the judgement of his senses that the Sun and Stars should be so very much less then this Globe as the contrary seems in ours and 't is not unlikely that he had as clear a perception of the earths motion as we think we have of its quiescence Thus the accuracy of his knowledge of natural effects might probably arise from his sensible perception of their causes What the experiences of many ages will scarce afford us at this distance from perfection his quicker senses could teach in a moment And whereas we patch up a piece of Philosophy from a few industriously gather'd and yet scarce well observ'd or digested experiments his knowledge was compleatly built upon the certain extemporary notice of his comprehensive unerring faculties His sight could inform him whether the Loadstone doth attract by Atomical Effluviums which may gain the more credit by the consideration of what some affirm that by the help of Microscopes they have beheld the subtile streams issuing from the beloved Minerall It may be he saw the motion of the bloud and spirits through the transparent skin as we do the workings of those little industrious Animals through a hive of glasse The Mysterious influence of the Moon and its causality on the seas motion was no question in his Philosophy no more then a Clocks motion is in ours where our senses may inform us of its cause Sympathies and Antipathies were to him no occult qualities Causes are hid in night and obscurity from us which were all Sun to him Now to shew the reasonableness of this Hypothesis I 'le suppose what I think few will deny That God adorn'd that creature which was a transcript of himself with all the perfections its capacity could bear And that this great extent of the senses Horizon was a perfection easily competible to sinless humanity will appear by the improvement of the two following principles First as far as the operation of nature reacheth it works by corporeal instruments If the Coelestial lights influence our Earth and advance the Production of Minerals in their hidden beds it is done by material communications And if there be any virtue proceeding from the Pole to direct the motion of the enamour'd steel however unobserv'd those secret influences may be they work not but by corporal Application Secondly Sense is made by motion caus'd by bodily impression on the organ and continued to the brain and centre of perception Hence it is manifest that all bodies are in themselves sensible in as much as they can impress this motion which is the immediate cause of sensation And therefore as in the former Principle the most distant efficients working by a corporeal causality if it be not perceiv'd the non-perception must arise from the dulness and imperfection of the faculty and not any defect in the object So then is it probable that
the tenuous matter the instrument of remoter agents should be able to move and change the particles of the indisposed clay or steel and yet not move the ductile easie senses of perfected man Indeed we perceive not such subtile insinuations because their action is overcome by the strokes of stronger impressors and we are so limited in our perceptions that we can only attend to the more vigorous impulse but this is an imperfection incident to our degraded natures which infinite wisdom easily prevented in his innocent Master-piece Upon such considerations to me it appears to be most reasonable that the circumference of our Protoplast's senses should be the same with that of natures activity unless we will derogate from his perfections and so reflect a disparagement on him that made us And I am the more perswaded of the concinnity of this notion when I consider the uncouth harshness either of the way of actuall concreated knowledge or of infant growing faculties neither of which methinks seem to be much favour'd by our severer reasons Thus I have given a brief account of what might have been spun into Volumes a full description of such perfections cannot be given but by him that hath them an attainment which we shall never reach till mortality be swallowed up of life CHAP. II. Our Decay and Ruins by the fall descanted on Of the now Scantness of our Knowledge with a censure of the Schoolmen and Peripatetick Dogmatists BUt 't is a miserable thing to have been happy and a self-contracted wretchedness is a double one Had felicity alwayes been a stranger to humanity our now misery had been none and had not our selves been the Authors of our ruines less We might have been made unhappy but since we are miserable we chose it He that gave them might have taken from us our extern injoyments but none could have robb'd us of innocence but our selves That we are below the Angels of God is no misery 't is the lot of our natures but that we have made our selves like the beasts that perish is so with a witness because the fruit of our sin While man knew no sin he was ignorant of nothing else that it imported humanity to know but when he had sinned the same trangression that opened his eyes to see his own shame shut them against most things else but it and his newly purchased misery With the nakedness of his body he saw that of his soul and the blindness and disaray of his faculties which his former innocence was a stranger to and that that shew'd them him made them Whether our purer intellectuals or only our impetuous affections were the prime authors of the anomie I dispute not sin is as latent in its first cause as visible in its effects and 't is the mercy of heaven that hath made it easier to know the cure then the rise of our distempers This is certain that our masculine powers are deeply sharers of the consequential mischiefs and though Eve were the first in the disobedience yet was Adam a joint partaker of the curse We are not now like the creatures we were made and have not only lost our Makers image but our own And do not much more transcend the creatures which God and nature have plac't at our feet then we come short of our antient selves a proud affecting to be like Gods hath made us unlike Men. For whereas our ennobled understandings could once take the wings of the morning to visit the world above us and had a glorious display of the highest form of created excellencies it now lies groveling in this lower region muffled up in mists and darkness the curse of the Serpent is fallen upon degenerated humanity that it should go on its belly and lick the dust And as in the Cartesian hypothesis the Planets sometimes lose their light by the fixing of the impurer scum so our impaired intellectuals which were once as pure light and flame in regard of their vigour and activity are now darkned by those grosser spots which our disobedience hath contracted And our now overshadow'd souls to whose beauties stars were foils may be exactly emblem'd by those crusted globes whose influential emissions are intercepted by the interposal of the benighting element while the purer essence is imprison'd within the narrow compasse of a centre For these once glorious lights which did freely shed abroad their harmeless beams and wanton'd in a larger circumference are now pent up in a few first principles the naked essentials of our faculties within the straight confines of a Prison And whereas knowledge dwelt in our undepraved natures as light in the Sun in as great plenty as purity it is now hidden in us like sparks in a flint both in scarcity and obscurity For considering the shortness of our intellectual sight the deceptibility and impositions of our senses the tumultuary disorders of our passions the prejudices of our infant educations and infinite such like of which an after oecasion will befriend us with a more full and particular recital I say by reason of these we may conclude of the science of the most of men truly so called that it may be truss'd up in the same room with the Iliads yea it may be all the certainty of those high pretenders to it the voluminous Schoolmen and Peripatetical Dictators bating what they have of first Principles and the Word of God may be circumscrib'd by as small a circle as the Creed when Brachygraphy had confin'd it within the compass of a penny And methinks the disputes of those assuming confidents are like the controversie of those in Plato's den who having never seen but the shadow of an horse trajected against a wall eagerly contended whether its neighing proceeded from the appearing Mane or Tail which they saw moving through the agitation of the substance playing in the winde so these in the darker cels of their imagin'd principles violently differ about the shadowes and exuviae of beings words and notions while for the most part they ignore the substantial realities and like children make babies for their phancies to play with while their useless subtilties afford but little intertain to the nobler faculties But many of the most accomplish't wits of all ages whose modesty would not allow them to boast of more then they were owners of have resolv'd their knowledge into Socrates his summe total and after all their pains in quest of Science have sat down in a profest nescience It is the shallow unimprov'd intellects that are the confident pretenders to certainty as if contrary to the Adage Science had no friend but Ignorance And though when they speak in the general of the weakness of our understandings and the scantness of our knowledge their discourse may even justifie Scepticism it self yet in their particular opinions are as assertive and dogmatical as if they were omniscient To such as a curbe to confidence and an evidence of humane infirmities even in the noblest parts
formally heat is not in the fire but is an expression of our sentiment Yet in propriety of speech the Senses themselves are never deceived but only administer an occasion of deceit to the understanding prov'd by reason and the Authority of St. Austin SEcondly the best Philosophy the deserved Title of the Cartesian derives all sensitive perception from Motion and corporal impress some account of which we have above given Not that the Formality of it consists in material Reaction as Master Hobbs affirms totally excluding any immaterial concurrence But that the representations of Objects to the Soul the only animadversive principle are conveyed by motions made upon the immediate Instruments of Sense So that the diversity of our Sensations ariseth from the diversity of the motion or figure of the object which in a different manner affect the Brain whence the Soul hath its immediate intelligence of the quality of what is presented Thus the different effects which fire and water have on us which we call heat and cold result from the so differing configuration and agitation of their Particles and not from I know not what Chimerical beings supposed to inhere in the objects their cause and thence to be propagated by many petty imaginary productions to the seat of Sense So that what we term heat and cold and other qualities are not properly according to Philosophical rigour in the Bodies their Efficients but are rather Names expressing our passions and therefore not strictly attributable to any thing without us but by extrinsick denomination as Vision to the Wall This I conceive to be an Hypothesis well worthy a rational belief and yet is it so abhorrent from the Vulgar that they would assoon believe Anaxagoras that snow is black as him that should affirm it is not white and if any should in earnest assert that the fire is not formally hot it would be thought that the heat of his brain had fitted him for Anticyra and that his head were so to madness For it is conceiv'd to be as certain as our faculties can make it that the same qualities which we resent within us are in the object their Source And yet this confidence is grounded on no better foundation then a delusory prejudice and the vote of misapplyed sensations which have no warrant to determine either one or other I may indeed conclude that I am formally hot or cold I feel it But whether these qualities are formally or only eminently in their producent is beyond the knowledge of the sensitive Even the Peripatetick Philosophy will teach us that heat is not in the Body of the Sun but only vertually and as in its cause though it be the Fountain and great Distributour of warmth to the neather Creation and yet none urge the evidence of sense to disprove it Neither can it with any more Justice be alledged against this Hypothesis For if it be so as Des-Cartes would have it yet sense would constantly present it to us as Now. We should finde heat as infallible an attendant upon fire and the increase thereof by the same degrees in our approach to the Fountain calefacient and the same excess within the Visible substance as Now which yet I think to be the chief inducements to the adverse belief For Fire I retain the instance which yet may be applyed to other cases being constant in its specifical motions in those smaller derivations of it which are its instruments of action and therefore in the same manner striking the sentient though gradually varying according to the proportions of more or less quantity or agitation c. will not fail to produce the same effect in us which we call heat when ever we are within the Orb of its activity And the heat must needs be augmented by proximity and most of all within the Flame because of the more violent motion of the particles there which therefore begets in us a stronger sense Now if this motive Energie the Instrument of this active Element must be called Heat let it be so I contend not I know not how otherwise to call it To impose names is part of the Peoples Charter and I fight not with Words Only I would not that the Idea of our Passions should be apply'd to any thing without us when it hath its subject no where but in our selves This is the grand deceit which my design is to detect and if possible to rectifie Thus we have seen two notorious instances of sensitive deception which justifie the charge of Petron. Arbiter Fallunt nos oculi vagique sensus Oppressâ ratione mentiuntur And yet to speak properly and to do our senses right simply they are not deceived but only administer an occasion to our forward understandings to deceive themselves and so though they are some way accessory to our delusion yet the more principal faculties are the Capital offenders Thus if the Senses represent the Earth as fixt and immoveable they give us the truth of their Sentiments To sense it is so and it would be deceit to present it otherwise For as we have shewn though it do move in it self it rests to us who are carry'd with it And it must needs be to sense unalterably quiescent in that our Rotation with it prevents the variety of successive Impress which only renders motion sensible And so if we erroneously attribute our particular incommunicable sensations to things which do no more resemble them then the effect doth its aequivocal cause our senses are not in fault but our precipitate judgements We feel such or such a sentiment within us and herein is no cheat or misprison 't is truly so and our sense concludes nothing of its Rise or Origine But if hence our Understandings falsly deduct that there is the same quality in the external Impressor 't is it is criminal our sense is innocent When the Ear tingles we really hear a sound If we judge it without us it 's the fallacy of our Iudgments The apparitions of our frighted Phancies are real sensibles But if we translate them without the compass of our Brains and apprehend them as external objects it 's the unwary rashness of our Understanding deludes us And if our disaffected Palates resent nought but bitterness from our choicest viands we truly tast the unpleasing quality though falsly conceive it in that which is no more then the occasion of its production If any find fault with the novelty of the notion the learned St. Austin stands ready to confute the charge and they who revere Antiquity will derive satisfaction from so venerable a suffrage He tells us Si quis remum frangi in aquâ opinatur cùm aufertur integrari non malum habet internuncium sed malus est Iudex And onward to this purpose The sense could not otherwise perceive it in the water neither ought it For since the Water is one thing and the Air another 't is requisite and necessary that the sense should be as
either refer not at all unto them or in a remoter capacity Hence the Indian conceiv'd so grossly of the Letter that discover'd his Theft and that other who thought the Watch an Animal From hence grew the impostures of charms and amulets and other insignificant ceremonies which to this day impose upon common belief as they did of old upon the Barbarism of the incultivate Heathen Thus effects unusual whose causes run under ground and are more remote from ordinary discernment are noted in the Book of Vulgar Opinion with Digitus Dei or Daemonis though they owe no other dependence to the first then what is common to the whole Syntax of beings nor yet any more to the second then what is given it by the imagination of those unqualifi'd Judges Thus every unwonted Meteor is portentous and the appearance of any unobserved Star some divine Prognostick Antiquity thought Thunder the immediate voyce of Iupiter and impleaded them of impiety that referr'd it to natural causalities Neither can there happen a storm at this remove from Antique ignorance but the multitude will have the Devil in 't CHAP. XIII The sixth Reason discours't of viz. the interest which our Affections have in our Dijudications The cause why our Affections mislead us several branches of this mention'd and the first viz Constitutional Inclination largely insisted on AGain we owe much of our Errour and Intellectual scarcity to the Interest in and power which our affections have over our so easily seducible Understandings And 't is a truth well worthy the Pen from which it dropt Periit Iudicium ubi res transiit in Affectum That Iove himself cannot be wise and in Love may be understood in a larger sense then Antiquity meant it Affection bribes the Judgement to the most notorious inequality and we cannot expect an equitable award where the Judge is made a Party So that that Understanding only is capable of giving a just decision which is as Aristotle saith of the Law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But where the Will or Passion hath the casting voyce the case of Truth is desperate And yet this is the miserable disorder into which we are laps'd The lower Powers are gotten uppermost and we see like men on our heads as Plato observ'd of old that on the right hand which indeed is on the left The Woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the Garden and our Understandings are wedded to an Eve as fatal as the Mother of our miseries And while all things are judg'd according to their suitableness or disagreement to the Gusto of the fond Feminine we shall be as far from the Tree of Knowledge as from that which is guarded by the Cherubin The deceiver soon found this soft place of Adam's and Innocency it self did not secure him from this way of seduction The first deception enter'd in at this Postern and hath ever since kept it open for the entry of Legion so that we scarse see any thing now but through our Passions the most blind and sophisticate things about us Thus the Monsters which story relates to have their Eyes in their breasts are pictures of us in our invisible selves Our Love of one Opinion induceth us to embrace it and our Hate of another doth more then fit us for its rejection And that Love is blind is extensible beyond the object of Poetry When once the affections are engag'd there 's but a short step to the Understanding and Facilè credimus quod volumus is a truth that needs not plead Authority to credit it The reason I conceive is this Love as it were uniting the Object to the Soul gives it a kind of Identity with us so that the beloved Idea is but our selves in another Name and when self is at the bar the sentence is not like to be impartial For every man is naturally a Narcissus and each passion in us no other but self-love sweetned by milder Epithets We can love nothing but what is agreeable to us and our desire of what is so hath its first inducement from within us Yea we love nothing but what hath some resemblance within our selves and whatever we applaud as good or excellent is but self in a transcript and è contrà Thus to reach the highest of our Amours and to speak all at once We love our friends because they are our Image and we love our God because we are his So then the beloved Opinion being thus wedded to the Intellect the case of our espoused self becomes our own And when we weigh our selves Iustice doth not use to hold the ballance Besides all things being double-handed and having the appearances both of Truth and Falshood where our affections have engaged us we attend only to the former which we see through a magnifying Medium while looking on the latter through the wrong end of the Perspective which scants their dimensions we neglect and contemn them Yea and as in corrupt judicial proceedings the fore-stalled Understanding passes a peremptory sentence upon the single hearing of one Party and so comes under the Poets censure of him Qui statuit aliquid parte inauditâ alterâ But to give a more particular account of this Gullery Our affections engage us as by our Love to our selves so by our Love to others Of the former we have the observable instances of natural disposition Custom and Education Interest and our proper Invention Of the latter in that Homage which is payd to Antiquity and Authority I take them up in order 1. Congruity of Opinions whether true or false to our natural constitution is one great incentive to their belief and reception and in a sense too the complexion of the mind as well as manners follows the Temperament of the Body Thus some men are genially disposited to some Opinions and naturally as averse to others Some things we are inclined to love and we know not why Others we disesteem and upon no better account then the Poet did Sabidius Hoc tantùm possum dicere Non amo te Some faces at first sight we admire and dote on others in our impartial apprehensions no less deserving our esteem we can behold without resentment and it may be with an invincible disregard I question not but intellectual representations are received by us with as an unequal a Fate upon a bare Temperamental Relish or Disgust And I believe the Understanding hath its Idiosyncrasies as well as other faculties Some men are made to superstition others to frantick Enthusiasm the former by the cold of a timorous heart the latter by the heat of a temerarious brain And there are natures as fatally averse to either And the opinions which are suited to their respective tempers will be sure to find their welcome and to grow without manure Your dull phlegmatick Souls are taken with the dulness of sensible doctrines and the more Mercurial Geniuses calculated to what is more refined and Intellectual Thus opinions have their
names from their known meaning to Senses most alien and to darken speech by words without knowledge are none of the most inconsiderable faults of this Philosophy To reckon them in their particular instances would puzzle Archimedes Now hence the genuine Idea's of the Mind are adulterate and the Things themselves lost in a crowd of Names and Intentional nothings Thus these Verbosities do emasculate the Understanding and render it slight and frivolous as its objects Me thinks the late Voluminous Iesuites those Laplanders of Peripateticism do but subtilly trifle and their Philosophick undertakings are much like his who spent his time in darting Cumming-seeds through the Eye of a Needle One would think they were impregnated as are the Mares in Cappadocia they are big of words their tedious Volumes have the Tympany and bring forth the wind To me a cursus Philosophicus is but an Impertinency in Folio and the studying of them a laborious idleness 'T is here that things are crumbled into notional Atomes and the substance evaporated into an imaginary Aether The Intellect that can feed on this air is a Chamaelion and a meer inflated skin From this stock grew School-divinity which is but Peripateticism in a Theological Livery A School-man is the Ghost of the Stagirite in a Body of condensed Air and Thomas but Aristotle sainted But to make good our charge against the Philosophy of the Schools by a more close surveying it That its Principles are steril unsatisfying Verbosities cannot escape the notice of the most shallow Inquirer To begin at the bottom their Materia prima is a meer chimaera If we can fix a determinate conceit of nothing that 's the Idea on 't And Nec quid nec quale nec quantum is as as apposite a definition of nothing as can be If we would conceive this Imaginary Matter we must deny all things of it that we can conceive and what remains is the thing we look for And should we allow it all which its Assertors assign it viz. Quantity interminate 't is still but an empty extended capacity and therefore at the best but like that Space which we imagine was before the beginning of Time and will be after the Universal Flames 'T is easie to draw a Parallelism between that Ancient and this more Modern Nothing and in all things to make good its resemblance to that Commentitious Inanity The Peripatetick matter is a pure unactuated Power and this conceited Vacuum a meer Receptibility Matter is suppos'd indeterminate and Space is so The pretended first matter is capable of all forms And the imaginary space is receptive of any body The matter can be actuated at once but by a single Informant and Space is replenisht by one Corporal Inexistence Matter cannot naturally subsist uninform'd And Nature avoids vacuity in space The matter is ingenerate and beyond corruption And the space was before and will be after either The matter in all things is but one and the space most uniform Thus the Foundation-Principle of Peripateticism runs but parallel to an acknowledg'd nothing and their agreement in essential characters makes rather an Identity then a Parity but that Imaginary space hath more to plead for its reality then the matter hath and herein only are they dissimilar For that hath no dependence on the bodies which possess it but was before them and will survive them whereas this essentially relies on the form and cannot subsist without it Which yet me thinks is little better then an absurdity that the cause should be an Eleemosynary for its subsistence to its effect and a nature posterior to and dependent on it self This dependentia a posteriori though in a diverse way of causality my reason could never away with Yea one of their own Oviedo a Spanish Jesuite hath effectually impugn'd it So then there 's nothing real answering this Imaginary Proteus and Materia prima hath as much of being as Mons aureus But to take a step further their Form is as obnoxious and as dry a word as the formention'd Nominal I 'le not spend time in an industrious confutation The subject is dry and I long to be out on 't with a note on its imaginary Origine I 'le leave it It 's source is as obscure as Nile's and Potentia materiae is a pitiful figment Did it suppose any thing of the form to pre-exist in the matter as the seminal of its being 't were tolerable sense to say it were educed from it But by educing the affirmers only mean a producing in it with a subjective dependence on its Recipient a very fine signification of Eduction which answers not the question whence 't is derived but into what it is received The question is of the terminus à quo and the answer of the subject So that all that can be made of this power of the matter is meerly a receptive capacity and we may as well affirm that the world was educ'd out of the power of the imaginary space and give that as a sufficient account of its Original And in this language to grow rich were to educe money out of the power of the Pocket To make a full discovery of the jejune emptiness of these Philosophick Principles were a task as easie for an ordinary undertaker as it would be tedious to an Ingenious Reader Gassendus hath excellently perform'd it and I am confident to the conviction of those whom nobler Principles have not yet emancipated from that degenerous slavery I shall not attempt a work that hath been finished by such an Apelles Only to give an hint more of this verbal emptiness a short view of a definition or two will be current evidence which though in Greek or Latine they amuse us yet a vernacular translation unmasks them and if we make them speak English the cheat is transparent Light is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith that Philosophy In English the Act of a perspicuous body Sure Aristotle here transgrest his Topicks and if this definition be clearer and more known then the thing defin'd midnight may vye for conspicuity with noon Is not light more known then this insignificant Energie And what 's a diaphanous body but the Lights medium the Air so that light is the act of the Air which definition spoils the Riddle and makes it no wonder a man should see by night as well as by day Thus is light darkned by an illustration and the Sun it self is wrap'd up in obscuring clouds As if light were best seen by darkness as light inaccessible is known by Ignorance If Lux be Umbra Dei this definition is Umbra lucis The Infant that was last enlarged from its maternal cels knows more what light is then this definition teacheth Again that motion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. is as insignificant as the former By the most favourable interpretation of that unintelligible Entelechy It is but an act of a being in power as it is in power The construing of which to
among a croud of Saylors in a storm Nor do the eager clamors of contending Disputants yeeld any more relief to eclipsed Truth then did the sounding Brass of old to the labouring Moon When it 's under question 't were as good flip cross and pile as to dispute for 't and to play a game at Chess for an opinion in Philosophy as my self and an ingenious Friend have sometime sported is as likely a way to determine Thus the Peripatetick procedure is inept for Philosophical solutions The Lot were as equitable a decision as their empty Loquacities 'T is these nugacious Disputations that have been the great hinderance to the more improveable parts of Learning and the modern Retainers to the Stagirite have spent their sweat and pains upon the most litigious parts of his Philosophy while those that find less play for the contending Genius are incultivate Thus Logick Physicks Metaphysicks are the burden of Volumes and the dayly entertainment of the Disputing Schools while the more profitable doctrines of the Heavens Meteors Minerals Animals as also the more practical ones of Politicks and Oeconomicks are scarce so much as glanc'd at And the indisputable Mathematicks the only Science Heaven hath yet vouchsaf't Humanity have but few Votaries among the slaves of the Stagirite What the late promoters of the Aristotelian Philosophy have writ on all these so fertile subjects can scarce compare with the single disputes about Materia prima Nor hath Humane Science monopoliz'd the damage that hath sprung from this Root of Evils Theology hath been as deep a sharer The Volumes of the Schoolmen are deplorable evidence of Peripatetick depravations And Luther's censure of that Divinity Quam primum apparuit Theologia Scholastica evanuit Theologia Crucis is neither uncharitable nor unjust This hath mudded the Fountain of Certainty with notional and Ethnick admixtions and platted the head of Evangelical truth as the Iews did its Author's with a Crown of thorns Here the most obvious Verity is subtiliz'd into niceties and spun into a thread indiscernible by common Opticks but through the spectacles of the adored Heathen This hath robb'd the Christian world of its unity and peace and made the Church the Stage of everlasting contentions And while Aristotle is made the Centre of Truth and Unity what hope of reconciling And yet most of these Scholastick controversies are ultimately resolv'd into the subtilties of his Philosophy And me thinks an Athenian should not be the best guide to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nor an Idolater to that God he neither knew nor owned When I read the eager contests of these Notional Theologues about things that are not I cannot but think of the pair of wise ones that fought for the middle And me thinks many of their Controversies are such as if we and our Antipodes should strive who were uppermost their title to Truth is equal He that divided his Text into one part did but imitate the Schoolmen in their coincident distinctions And the best of their curiosities are but like paint on Glass which intercepts and dyes the light the more desirable splendor I cannot look upon their elaborate trifles but with a sad reflexion on the degenerate state of our lapsed Intellects and as deep a resentment of the mischiefs of this School-Philosophy CHAP. XVIII 3. It gives no account of the Phaenomena those that are remoter it attempts not It speaks nothing pertinent in the most ordinary It s circular and general way of Solution It resolves all things into occult qualities The absurdity of the Aristotelian Hypothesis of the Heavens The Gallaxy is no meteor the Heavens are corruptible Comets are above the Moon The Sphear of fire derided Aristotle convicted of several other false assertions 3. THe Aristotelian Hypotheses give a very dry and jejune account of Nature's Phaenomena For as to its more mysterious reserves Peripatetick enquiry hath left them unattempted and the most forward notional Dictators sit down here in a contented ignorance and as if nothing more were knowable then is already discover'd they put stop to all endeavours of their Solution Qualities that were Occult to Aristotle must be so to us and we must not Philosophize beyond Sympathy and Antipathy whereas indeed the Rarities of Nature are in these Recesses and its most excellent operations Cryptick to common discernment Modern Ingenuity expects Wonders from Magnetick discoveries And while we know but its more sensible ways of working we are but vulgar Philosophers and not likely to help the World to any considerable Theories Till the Fountains of the great deeps are broken up Knowledge is not likely to cover the Earth as the waters the Sea Nor is the Aristotelian Philosophy guilty of this sloth and Philosophick penury only in remoter abstrusities but in solving the most ordinary causalities it is as defective and unsatisfying Even the most common productions are here resolv'd into Celestial influences Elemental combinations active and passive principles and such generalities while the particular manner of them is as hidden as sympathies And if we follow manifest qualities beyond the empty signification of their Names we shall find them as occult as those which are professedly so That heavy Bodies descend by gravity is no better an account then we might expect from a Rustick and again that Gravity is a quality whereby an heavy body descends is an impertinent Circle and teacheth nothing The feigned Central alliciency is but a word and the manner of it still occult That the fire burns by a quality called heat is an empty dry return to the Question and leaves us still ignorant of the immediate way of igneous solutions The accounts that this Philosophy gives by other Qualities are of the same Gender with these So that to say the Loadstone draws Iron by magnetick attraction and that the Sea moves by flux and reflux were as satisfying as these Hypotheses and the solution were as pertinent In the Qualities this Philosophy calls manifest nothing is so but the effects For the heat we feel is but the effect of the fire and the pressure we are sensible of but the effect of the descending body And effects whose causes are confessedly occult are as much within the sphear of our Senses and our Eyes will inform us of the motion of the Steel to its attrahent Thus Peripatetick Philosophy resolves all things into Occult qualities and the Dogmatists are the only Scepticks Even to them that pretend so much to Science the world is circumscrib'd with a Gyges his Ring and is intellectually invisible And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will best become the mouth of a Peripatetick For by their way of disquisition there can no more be truly comprehended then what 's known by every common Ignorant But ingenious inquiry will not be contented with such vulgar frigidities But further if we look into the Aristotelian Comments on the largest Volumes of the Universe The works of the fourth day are there as confused and disorderly as
of Humanity was born in the fulness of time and in the strength of its manly vigour But Philosophy and Arts commenced Embryo's and are compleated by Times gradual accomplishments And therefore what I cannot find in the leaves of former Inquisitours I seek in the Modern attempts of nearer Authors I cannot receive Aristotle's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in so extensive an interpretation as some would enlarge it to And that discouraging Maxime Nil dictum quod non dictum prius hath little room in my estimation Nor can I tye up my belief to the Letter of Solomon Except Copernicus be in the right there hath been something New under the Sun I 'm sure later times have seen Novelties in the Heavens above it I do not think that all Science is Tautology The last Ages have shewn us what Antiquity never saw no not in a Dream CHAP. XX. It 's queried whether there be any Science in the sense of the Dogmatists 1 We cannot know any thing to be the cause of another but from its attending it and this way is not infallible declared by instances especially from the Philosophy of Des-Cartes All things are mixt and 't is difficult to assign each Cause its distinct Effect 2 There 's no demonstration but where the contrary is impossible We can scarce conclude so of any thing Instances of supposed impossibles which are none A story of a Scholar that turn'd Gipsy and of the power of Imagination Of one mans binding anothers thoughts and a conjecture at the maner of its performance COnfidence of Science is one great reason we miss it whereby presuming we have it every where we seek it not where it is and therefore fall short of the object of our Enquiry Now to give further check to Dogmatical pretensions and to discover the vanity of assuming Ignorance we 'll make a short enquiry whether there be any such thing as Science in the sense of its Assertours In their notion then it is the knowledge of things in their true immediate necessary causes Upon which I 'le advance the following Observations 1. All Knowledge of Causes is deductive for we know none by simple intuition but through the mediation of its effects Now we cannot conclude any thing to be the cause of another but from its continual accompanying it for the causality it self is insensible Thus we gather fire to be the cause of heat and the Sun of day-light because where ever fire is we find there 's heat and where ever the Sun is Light attends it and è contrà But now to argue from a concomitancy to a causality is not infallibly conclusive Yea in this way lies notorious delusion Is 't not possible and how know we the contrary but that something which alway attends the grosser flame may be the cause of heat and may not it and its supposed cause be only parallel effects Suppose the fire had ne're appear'd but had been still hid in smoke and that heat did alway proportionably encrease and diminish with the greater or less quantity of that fuliginous exhalation should we ever have doubted that smoke was the cause on 't Suppose we had never seen more Sun then in a cloudy day and that the lesser lights had ne're shewn us their lucid substance Let us suppose the day had alway broke with a wind and had proportionably varyed as that did Had not he been a notorious Sceptick that should question the causality But we need not be beholding to such remote suppositions The French Philosophy furnishes us with a better instance For according to the Principles of the illustrious Des-Cartes there would be light though the Sun and Stars gave none and a great part of what we now enjoy is independent on their beams Now if this seemingly prodigious Paradox can be reconcil'd to the least probability of conjecture or may it be made but a tolerable supposal I presume it may then win those that are of most difficil belief readily to yeeld that causes in our account the most palpable may possibly be but uninfluential attendants since that there is not an instance can be given wherein we opinion a more certain efficiency So then according to the tenour of that concinnous Hypothesis light being caused by the Conamen of the Matter of the Vortex to recede from the Centre of its Motion it is easily deducible that were there none of that fluid Aether which makes the body of the Sun in the Centre of our world or should it cease from action yet the conatus of the circling matter would not be considerably less but according to the indispensable Laws of Motion must press the Organs of Sense as now though it may be not with so smart an impulse Thus we see how there might be Light before the Luminaries and Evening and Morning before there was a Sun So then we cannot infallibly assure our selves of the truth of the causes that most obviously occur and therefore the foundation of scientifical procedure is too weak for so magnificent a superstructure Besides That the World 's a mass of heterogeneous subsistencies and every part thereof a coalition of distinguishable varieties we need not go far for evidence And that all things are mixed and Causes blended by mutual involutions I presume to the Intelligent will be no difficult concession Now to profound to the bottom of these diversities to assign each cause its distinct effects and to limit them by their just and true proportions are necessary requisites of Science and he that hath compast them may boast he hath out-done humanity But for us to talk of Knowledge from those few indistinct representations which are made to our grosser faculties is a flatulent vanity 2. We hold no demonstration in the notion of the Dogmatist but where the contrary is impossible For necessary is that which cannot be otherwise Now whether the acquisitions of any on this side perfection can make good the pretensions to so high strain'd an infallibility will be worth a reflexion And me thinks did we but compare the miserable scantness of our capacities with the vast profundity of things both truth and modesty would teach us a dialect more becoming short-sighted mortality Can nothing be otherwise which we conceive impossible to be so Is our knowledge and things so adequately commensurate as to justifie the affirming that that cannot be which we comprehend not Our demonstrations are levyed upon Principles of our own not universal Nature And as my Lord Bacon notes we judge from the Analogy of our selves not the Universe Now are not many things certain by the Principles of one which are impossible to the apprehensions of another Thus some things our Juvenile reasons tenaciously adhere to which yet our maturer Judgements disallow of many things to meer sensible discerners are impossible which to the enlarged principles of more advanced Intellects are easie verities Yea that 's absurd in one Philosophy which is a worthy Truth in another and
their conveyance and their regular direction is handsomly explicated by that learned Knight and recommended to the Ingenious by most witty and becoming illustrations It is out of my way here to enquire whether the Anima Mundi be not a better account then any Mechanical Solutions The former is more desperate the later hath more of ingenuity then solid satisfaction It is enough for me that de facto there is such an entercourse between the Magnetick unguent and the vulnerated body and I need not be solicitous of the Cause These theories I presume will not be importunate to the ingenious and therefore I have taken the liberty which the quality of an Essay will well enough allow of to touch upon them though seemingly collateral to my scope And yet I think they are but seemingly so since they do pertinently illustrate my design viz. That what seems impossible to us may not be so in Nature and therefore the Dogmatist wants this to compleat his demonstration that 't is impossible to be otherwise Now I intend not by any thing here to invalidate the certainty of truths either Mathematical or Divine These are superstructed on principles that cannot fail us except our faculties do constantly abuse us Our religious foundations are fastned at the pillars of the intellectual world and the grand Articles of our Belief as demonstrable as Geometry Nor will ever either the subtile attempts of the resolved Atheist or the passionate Hurricanoes of the phrentick Enthusiast any more be able to prevail against the reason our Faith is built on than the blustring windes to blow out the Sun And for Mathematical Sciences he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of Hellebore Nor yet can the Dogmatist make much of these concessions in favour of his pretended Science for our discourse comes not within the circle of the former and for the later the knowledge we have of the Mathematicks hath no reason to elate us since by them we know but numbers and figures creatures of our own and are yet ignorant of our Maker's 3. We cannot know any thing of Nature but by an Analysis of it to its true initial causes and till we know the first springs of natural motions we are still but ignorants These are the Alphabet of Science and Nature cannot be read without them Now who dares pretend to have seen the prime motive causes or to have had a view of Nature while she lay in her simple Originals we know nothing but effects and those but by our Senses Nor can we judge of their Causes but by proportion to palpable causalities conceiving them like those within the sensible Horizon Now 't is no doubt with the considerate but that the rudiments of Nature are very unlike the grosser appearances Thus in things obvious there 's but little resemblance between the Mucous sperm and the compleated Animal The Egge is not like the oviparous production nor the corrupted muck like the creature that creeps from it There 's but little similitude betwixt a terreous humidity and plantal germinations nor do vegetable derivations ordinarily resemble their simple scminalities So then since there 's so much dissimilitude between Cause and Effect in the more palpable Phaenomena we can expect no less between them and their invisible efficients Now had our Senses never presented us with those obvious seminal principles of apparent generations we should never have suspected that a plant or animal could have proceeded from such unlikely materials much less can we conceive or determine the uncompounded initials of natural productions in the total silence of our Senses And though the Grand Secretary of Nature the miraculous Des-Cartes have here infinitely out-done all the Philosophers went before him in giving a particular and Analytical account of the Universal Fabrick yet he intends his Principles but for Hypotheses and never pretends that things are really or necessarily as he hath supposed them but that they may be admitted pertinently to solve the Phaenomena and are convenient supposals for the use of life Nor can any further account be expected from humanity but how things possibly may have been made consonantly to sensible nature but infallibly to determine how they truly were effected is proper to him only that saw them in the Chaos and fashion'd them out of that confused mass For to say the principles of Nature must needs be such as our Philosophy makes them is to set bounds to Omnipotence and to confine infinite power and wisdom to our shallow models CHAP. XXII 4 Because of the mutual dependence and concatenation of Causes we cannot know any one without knowing all Particularly declared by instances 5 All our Science comes in at our Senses their infallibility inquir'd into The Authors design in this last particular 4 ACcording to the notion of the Dogmatist we know nothing except we knew all things and he that pretends to Science affects an Omniscience For all things being linkt together by an uninterrupted chain of Causes and every single motion owning a dependence on such a Syndrome of prae-required motors we can have no true knowledge of any except we comprehended all and could distinctly pry into the whole method of Causal Concatenations Thus we cannot know the cause of any one motion in a watch unless we were acquainted with all its motive dependences and had a distinctive comprehension of the whole Mechanical frame And would we know but the most contemptible plant that grows almost all things that have a being must contribute to our knowledge for that to the perfect Science of any thing it 's necessary to know all its causes is both reasonable in its self and the sense of the Dogmatist So that to the knowledge of the poorest simple we must first know its efficient the manner and method of its efformation and the nature of the Plastick To the comprehending of which we must have a full prospect into the whole Archidoxis of Nature's secrets and the immense profundities of occult Philosophy in which we know nothing till we compleatly ken all Magnetick and Sympathetick energies and their most hidden causes And 2 if we contemplate a vegetable in its material principle and look on it as made of earth we must have the true Theory of the nature of that Element or we miserably fail of our Scientifical aspirings and while we can only say 't is cold and dry we are pitiful knowers But now to profound into the Physicks of this heterogeneous masse to discern the principles of its constitution and to discover the reason of its diversities are absolute requisites of the Science we aim at Nor can we tolerably pretend to have those without the knowledge of Minerals the causes and manner of their Concretions and among the rest the Magnet with its amazing properties This directs us to the pole and thence our disquisition is led to the whole systeme of the Heavens to the knowledge of which we must know their motions and