such as her stirring up her self to love God or contemplate any Immateriall Object or they are such as have an influence on the Body as when by vertue of our Will we put ourselves upon going to this or that place He distinguishes again our Perceptions into two sorts whereof the one has the Soule for their cause the other the Body Those that are caused by the Body are most-what such as depend on the Nerves But besides these there is one kind of Imagination that is to be referred hither and that properly has the Body for its cause to wit that Imagination that arises meerly from the hitting of the Animall Spirits against the tracts of those Images that externall Objects have left in the Brain and so representing them to the Conarion which may happen in the day-time when our Fancy roves and we doe not set our selves on purpose to think on things as well as it does in sleep by night Those Perceptions that arrive to the Soule by the interposition of the Nerves differ one from another in this that some of them refer to outward Objects that strike our Sense others to our Body such as Hunger Thirst Pain c. and others to the Soule it self as Sorrow Joy Fear c. Those Perceptions that have the Soule for their cause are either the Perceptions of her own Acts of Will or else of her Speculation of things purely intelligible or else of Imaginations made at pleasure or finally of Reminiscency when she searches out something that she has let slip out of her Memory 10. That which is observable in this Distribution is this That all those Cogitations that he calls Actions as also those kind of Perceptions whose cause he assignes to the Soule are in themselves and are acknowledged by him of that nature that they cannot be imitated by any creature by the meer organization of i'ts Body But for the other he holds they may and would make us believe they are in Bodies of Brutes which he would have meer Machina's that is That from the meer Mechanical frame of their Body outward Objects of Sense may open Pores in their Brains so as that they may determine the Animall Spirits into such and such Muscles for spontaneous Motion That the course of the Spirits also falling into the Nerves in the Intestines and Stomack Spleen Heart Liver and other parts may cause the very same effects of Passion suppose of Love Hatred Joy Sorrow in these brute Machina's as we feel in our Bodies though they as being senseless feel them not and so the vellication of certain Tunicles and Fibres in the Stomack and Throat may affect their Body as ours is in the Sense of Hunger or Thirst and finally that the hitting of the Spirits into the tracts of the Brain that have been signed by Externall Objects may act so upon their Body as it does upon ours in Imagination and Memory Now adde to this Machina of Des-Cartes the capacity in Matter of Sensation and Perception which yet I have demonstrated it to be uncapable of and it will be exquisitely as much as Mr. Hobbs himself can expect to arise from meer Body that is All the Motions thereof being purely Mechanicall the perceptions and propensions will be fatall necessary and unavoidable as he loves to have them But being all Cogitations that Des-Cartes terms Actions as also all those kind of Perceptions that he acknowledges the Soule to be the cause of are not to be resolved into any Mechanicall contrivance we may take notice of them as a peculiar rank of Arguments and such as that if it could be granted that the Soules of Brutes were nothing but sentient Matter yet it would follow that a Substance of an higher nature and truly Immateriall must be the Principle of those more noble Operations we find in our selves as appears from Axiome 20. and 26. CHAP. VI. 1. That no part of the Spinall Marrow can be the Common Sensorium without a Soule in the Body 2. That the Animal Spirits are more likely to be that Common Percipient 3. But yet it is demonstrable they are not 4. As not being so much as capable of Sensation 5. Nor of directing Motion into the Muscles 6. Much less of Imagination and rationall Invention 7. Nor of Memory 8. An answer to an Evasion 9. The Authors reason why he has confuted so particularly all the suppositions of the Seat of Common Sense when few of them have been asserted with the exclusion of a Soule 1. THere remain now onely Two Opinions to be examined the one That place of the Spinall Marrow where Anatomists conceive there is the nearest concurse of all the Nerves of the Body the other the Animall Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain As for the former viz. That part of the Spinall Marrow where the concurse of the Nerves are conceived to be as I have answered in like case so I say again that besides that I have already demonstrated that Matter is uncapable of Sense and that there is no modification thereof in the Spinall Marrow that will make it more likely to be indued with that Faculty then the pith of Elder or a mess of Curds we are also to take notice that it is utterly inept for Motion nor is it conceivable how that part of it or any other that is assigned to this office of being the Common Percipient in us of all Thoughts and Objects which must also have the power of moving our members can having so little agitation in it self as appearing nothing but a kind of soft Pap or Pulp so nimbly and strongly move the parts of our Body 2. In this regard the Animal Spirits seem much more likely to perform that office and those the importunity of whose gross fancyes constrains them to make the Soule Corporeall doe nevertheless usually pitch upon some subtile thin Matter to constitute her nature or Essence And therefore they imagine her to be either Aire Fire Light or some such like Body with which the Animall Spirits have no small affinity 3. But this opinion though it may seem plausible at first sight yet the difficulties it is involved in are insuperable For it is manifest that all the Arguments that are brought Chap. 2. Sect. 3. will recur with full force in this place For there is no Matter that is so perfectly liquid as the Animal Spirits but consists of particles onely contiguous one to another and actually upon Motion playing and turning one by another as busy as Atomes in the Sun Now therefore let us consider whether that Treasury of pure Animall Spirits contained in the Fourth Ventricle be able to Sustain so noble an office as to be the common Percipient in our Body which as I have often repeated is so complex a Function that it does not onely contain the perception of externall Objects but Motion Imagination Reason and Memory 4. Now at the very first dash the transmission of the image of the Object
Soules makes the Soule a Discerpible essence it is unconceivable how these two parts should make up one Soule for the Infant a thing ridiculous at first view But if there be no decision of any parts of the Soule and yet the Soule of the Parent be the cause of the Soule of the Childe it is perfectly an act of Creation a thing that all sober men conclude incompetible to any particular Creature It is therfore plainly unintelligible how any Soul should pass from the Parents into the Body of the seed of the Foetus to actuate and inform it which might be sufficient to stop the mouth of the Opposer that pretends such great obscurities concerning the entrance of Praeexistent Souls into their Bodies CHAP. XIV 1. The knowledge of the difference of Vehicles and the Soules Union with them necessary for the understanding how she enters into this Earthly Body 2. That though the name of Vehicle be not in Aristotle yet the thing is there 3. A clearing of Aristotles notion of the Vehicle out of the Philosophy of Des-Cartes 4. A full interpretation of his Text. 5. That Aristotle makes onely two Vehicles Terrestriall and AEthereall which is more then sufficient to prove the Soul's Oblivion of her former state 6. That the ordinary Vehicle of the Soule after death is Aire 7. The duration of the Soule in her severall Vehicles 8. That the Union of the Soule with her Vehicle does not consist in Mechanicall Congruity but Vitall 9. In what Vitall congruity of the Matter consists 10. In what Vital congruity of the Soule consists and how it changing the Soule may be free from her aiery Vehicle without violent precipitation out of it 11. Of the manner of the descent of Souls into Earthly Bodies 12. That there is so little Absurdity in the Praeexistence of Soules that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our Demonstrations of her Immortality 1. BUT I shall spend my time better in clearing the Opinion I here defend then in perplexing that other that is so gross of it self that none that throughly understand the nature of the Soule can so much as allow the possibility thereof wherefore for the better conceiving how a Praeexistent Soule may enter this Terrestriall Body there are two things to be enquired into the difference of the Vehicles of Soules and the cause of their union with them The Platonists doe chiefly take notice of Three kindes of Vehicles AEthereal AEreal and Terrestrial in every one whereof there may be several degrees of purity and impurity which yet need not amount to a new Species 2. This notion of Vehicles though it be discoursed of most in the School of Plato yet is not altogether neglected by Aristotle as appears in his De Generat Animal Lib. 2. Cap. 3. where though he does not use the Name yet he does expresly acknowledge the Thing it self For he does plainly affirm that every Soule partakes of a Body distinct from this organized terrestriall Body and of a more divine nature then the Elements so called and that as one Soule is more noble then another so is the difference of this diviner Body which yet is nothing else with him then that warmth or heat in the seed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is not fire but a Spirit contained in the spumeous seed and in this Spirit a nature analogous to the element of the Stars 3. Of which neither Aristotle himself had nor any one else can have so explicite an apprehension as those that understand the first and second Element of Des-Cartes which is the most subtill and active Body that is in the World is of the very same nature that the Heaven and Stars are that is to say is the very Body of Light which is to be understood chiefly of the first Element though so mingled with other Matter here below that it does not shine but is the Basis of all that naturall warmth in all generations and the immediate instrument of the Soule when it organizeth any Matter into the figure or shape of an Animall as I have also intimated elsewhere when I proved that the Spirits are the immediate instrument of the Soule in all Vital and Animal functions In which Spirits of necessity is contained this Coelestiall Substance which keeps them from congealing as it does also all other liquid bodies and must needs be in the Pores of them there being no Vacuum in the whole comprehension of Nature 4. The full and express meaning therefore of Aristotles text must be this that in the spumeous and watry or terrene moisture of the seed is contained a Body of a more spirituous or aëreal consistency and in this aëreal or spirituous consistency is comprehended 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a nature that is analogous or like to the Element of the stars namely that is of it self aethereal and lucid 5. And it is this Vehicle that Aristotle seems to assert that the Soule does act in separate from the Body as if she were ever either in this terrestrial Body or in her aethereal one which if it were true so vast a change must needs obliterate all Memory of her former condition when she is once plunged into this earthly prison But it seems not so probable to me that Nature admits of so great a Chasme nor is it necessary to suppose it for this purpose the descent of the Soule out of her aiery Vehicle into this terrestrial Body and besmearing moisture of the first rudiments of life being sufficient to lull her into an eternall oblivion of whatever hapned to her in that other condition to say nothing of her long state of Silence and Inactivity before her turn come to revive in an earthly body 6. Wherefore not letting go that more orderly conceit of the Platonists I shall make bold to assert that the Soule may live and act in an aëreal Vehicle as well as in the aethereal and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a Coelestial Vehicle immediatly upon their quitting the terrestrial one that heavenly Chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the Soule of man is capable of which would arrive to all men indifferently good and bad if the parting with this earthly Body would suddainly mount us into the heavenly Wherefore by a just Nemesis the Soules of Men that are not very Heroically vertuous will finde themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous Aire as both Reason it self will suggest and the Platonists have unanimously determined 7. We have competently described the difference of those three kinds of Vehicles for their purity and consistency The Platonists adde to this the difference of duration making some of them of that nature as to entertain the Soule a longer time in them others a shorter The shortest of all is that of the Terrestrial Vehicle In the Aëreal the Soule may inhabit as they define many Ages and in the
made dying men visit their friends before their departure at many miles distance their Bodies still keeping their sick bed and those that have been well give a visit to their sick friends of whose health they have been over-desirous and solicitous For this Ecstasie is really of the Soul and not of the Blood or Animal Spirits neither of which have any Sense or Perception in them at all And therefore into this Principle is to be resolved that Story which Martinus Del-Rio reports of a Lad who through the strength of Imagination and Desire of seeing his Father fell into an Ecstasie and after he came to himself confidently affirmed he had seen him and told infallible circumstances of his being present with him 13. That Cardan and others could fall into an Ecstasie when they pleased by force of Imagination and Desire to fall into it is recorded and believed by very grave and sober Writers but whether they could ever doe it to a compleat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or local disjunction of the Soul from the Body I know none that dare affirm such events being rather the chances of Nature and Complexion as in the Noctambuli then the effects of our Will But we cannot assuredly conclude but that Art may bring into our own power and ordering that which natural causes put upon us sometimes without our leaves But whether those Oyntments of Witches have any such effect or whether those unclean Spirits they deal with by their immediate presence in their Bodies cannot for a time so suppress or alter their Vital fitness to such a degree as will loosen the Soul I leave to more curious Inquisitors to search after It is sufficient that I have demonstrated a very intelligible possibility of this actual separation without Death properly so called From whence the peremptory Confessions of Witches and the agreement of the story which they tell in several as well those that are there bodily as they that leave their Bodies behinde them especially when at their return they bring something home with them as a permanent sign of their being at the place is though it may be all the delusion of their Familiars no contemptible probability of their being there indeed where they declare they have been For these are the greatest evidences that can be had in humane affairs And nothing so much as the supposed Impossibility thereof has deterred men from believing the thing to be true CHAP. XVI 1. That Souls departed communicate Dreams 2. Examples of Apparitions of Souls deceased 3. Of Apparitions in fields where pitcht Battels have been fought as also of those in Churchyards and other vaporous places 4. That the Spissitude of the Air may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of Ghosts and Spectres 5. A further proof thereof from sundry examples 6. Of Marsilius Ficinus his appearing after death 7. With what sort of people such examples as these avail little 8. Reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those Apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased are indeed the Souls of them 1. THE Examples of the other sort viz. of the appearing of the Ghosts of men after death are so numerous and frequent in all mens mouths that it may seem superfluous to particularize in any This appearing is either by Dreams or open Vision In Dreams as that which hapned to Avenzoar Albumaron an Arabian Physitian to whom his lately-deceased friend suggested in his sleep a very soverain Medicine for his sore Eyes Like to this is that in Diodorus concerning Isis Queen of AEgypt whom he reports to have communicated remedies to the AEgyptians in their sleep after her death as well as she did when she was alive Of this kinde is also that memorable story of Posidonius the Stoick concerning two young men of Arcadia who being come to Megara and lying the one at a Victuallers the other in an Inne he in the Inne while he was asleep dream'd that his Fellow-traveller earnestly desired him to come and help him as being assaulted by the Victualler and in danger to be killed by him But he after he was perfectly awake finding it but a Dream neglected it But faln asleep again his murdered friend appeared to him the second time beseeching him that though he did not help him alive yet he would see his Death revenged telling him how the Victualler had cast his Body into a Dung-cart and that if he would get up timely in the morning and watch at the Town-gate he might thereby discover the murder which he did accordingly and so saw Justice done on the Murderer Nor does the first Dream make the second impertinent to our purpose For as that might be from the strength of Imagination and desire of help in the distressed Arcadian impressed on the Spirit of the World and so transmitted to his friend asleep a condition fittest for such communications so it is plain that this after his Death must fail if his Soul did either cease to be or to act And therefore it is manifest that she both was and did act and suggested this Dream in revenge of the Murder Of which kinde there be infinite examples I mean of Murders discovered by Dreams the Soul of the person murdered seeming to appear to some or other asleep and to make his complaint to them But I will content my self onely to adde an Example of Gratitude to this of Revenge As that of Simonides who lighting by chance on a dead Body by the Sea side and out of the sense of Humanity bestowing Burial upon it was requited with a Dream that saved his life For he was admonisht to desist from his Voyage he intended by Sea which the Soul of the deceased told him would be so perillous that it would hazard the lives of the Passengers He believed the Vision and abstaining was safe those others that went suffered Shipwrack 2. We will adjoyn onely an Example or two of that other kind of Visions which are ordinarily called the Apparitions of the dead And such is that which Pliny relates at large in his Epistle to Sura of an house haunted at Athens and freed by Athenodorus the Philosopher after the Body of that person that appeared to him was digged up and interred with due solemnity It is not a thing unlikely that most houses that are haunted are so chiefly from the Soules of the deceased who have either been murdered or some way injured or have some hid treasure to discover or the like And persons are haunted for the like causes as well as houses as Nero was after the murdering of his Mother Otho pull'd out of his bed in the night by the Ghost of Galba Such instances are infinite as also those wherein the Soule of ones friend suppose Father Mother or Husband have appeared to give them good counsell and to instruct them of the event of the greatest affairs of their life The Ghosts also of deceased Lovers have been reported to adhere
things I say are beyond the powers of Matter I have fully enough declared proved in a large Letter of mine to V. C. and therefore that I may not actum agere shall forbear speaking any farther thereof in this place To which you may adde that meer corporeal motion in Matter without any other guide would never so much as produce a round Sun or Star of which figure notwithstanding Des-Cartes acknowledges them to be But my reasons why it cannot be effected by the simple Mechanical powers of Matter I have particularly set down in my Letters to that excellent Philosopher CHAP. XIII 1. That the Descent of heavy Bodies argues the existence of the Spirit of Nature because else they would either hang in the Aire as they are placed 2. Or would be diverted from a perpendicular as they fall near a Plate of Metall set stooping 3. That the endeavour of the AEther or Aire from the Centre to the Circumference is not the cause of Gravity against Mr. Hobbs 4. A full confutation of Mr. Hobbs his Opinion 5. An ocular Demonstration of the absurd consequence thereof 6. An absolute Demonstration that Gravity cannot be the effect of meer Mechanical powers 7. The Latitude of the operations of the Spirit of Nature how large and where bounded 8. The reason of its name 9. It s grand office of transmitting Souls into rightly-prepared Matter 1. AND a farther confirmation that I am not mistaken therein is what we daily here experience upon Earth which is the descending of heavy Bodies as we call them Concerning the motion whereof I agree with Des-Cartes in the assignation of the immediate corporeal cause to wit the AEtherial matter which is so plentifully in the Air over it is in grosser Bodies but withall doe vehemently surmise that there must be some immaterial cause such as we call the Spirit of Nature or Inferiour Soule of the World that must direct the motions of the AEtherial particles to act upon these grosser Bodies to drive them towards the Earth For that surplusage of Agitation of the globular particles of the AEther above what they spend in turning the Earth about is carried every way indifferently according to his own concession by which motion the drops of liquors are formed into round figures as he ingeniously concludes From whence it is apparent that a bullet of iron silver or gold placed in the aire is equally assalted on all sides by the occursion of these aethereal particles and therefore will be moved no more downwards then upwards but hang in aequilibrio as a piece of Cork rests on the water where there is neither winde nor stream but is equally plaied against by the particles of water on all sides 3. Nor can the endeavour of the celestial Matter from the centre to the circumference take place here For besides that Des-Cartes the profoundest Master of Mechanicks has declin'd that way himself though Mr. Hobbs has taken it up it would follow that near the Poles of the Earth there would be no descent of heavy Bodies at all and in the very Clime we live in none perpendicular To say nothing how this way will not salve the union of that great Water that adheres to the body of the Moon 6. Adde unto all this that if the motion of gross Bodies were according to meer Mechanical laws a Bullet suppose of Lead or Gold cast up into the aire would never descend again but would persist in a rectilinear motion For it being farre more solid then so much Aire AEther put together as would fill its place and being moved with no less swiftness then that wherewith the Earth is carried about in twenty four hours it must needs break out in a straight line through the thin aire and never return again to the Earth but get away as a Comet does out of a Vortex And that de facto a Canon Bullet has been shot so high that it never fell back again upon the ground Des-Cartes does admit of as a true experiment Of which for my own part I can imagine no other unexceptionable reason but that at a certain distance the Spirit of Nature in some regards leaves the motion of Matter to the pure laws of Mechanicks but within other bounds checks it whence it is that the Water does not swill out of the Moon 7. Now if the pure Mechanick powers in Matter and Corporeal motion will not amount to so simple a Phaenomenon as the falling of a stone to the Earth how shall we hope they will be the adaequate cause of sundry sorts of Plants and other things that have farre more artifice and curiosity then the direct descent of a stone to the ground Nor are we beaten back again by this discovery into that dotage of the confounded Schools who have indued almost every different Object of our Senses with a distinct Substantial form and then puzzle themselves with endless scrupulosities about the generation corruption and mixtion of them For I affirm with Des-Cartes that nothing affects our Senses but such variations of Matter as are made by difference of Motion Figure Situation of parts c. but I dissent from him in this in that I hold it is not meer and pure mechanical motion that causes all these sensible Modifications in Matter but that many times the immediate Director thereof is this Spirit of Nature I speak of one and the same every where and acting alwaies alike upon like occasions as a clear-minded man and of a solid judgment gives alwaies the same verdict in the same circumstances For this Spirit of Nature intermedling with the efformation of the Foetus of Animals as I have already shewn more then once where notwithstanding there seems not so much need there being in them a more particular Agent for that purpose 't is exceeding rational that all Plants and Flowers of all sorts in which we have no argument to prove there is any particular Souls should be the effects of this Universal Soule of the World Which Hypothesis besides that it is most reasonable in it self according to that ordinary Axiome Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora is also very serviceable for the preventing many hard Problems about the Divisibility of the Soules of Plants their Transmutations into other Species the growing of Slips and the like For there is one Soule ready every where to pursue the advantages of prepared Matter Which is the common and onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of all Plantal appearances or of whatever other Phaenomena there be greater or smaller that exceed the pure Mechanical powers of Matter We except onely Men and Beasts who having all of them the capacity of some sort of enjoyments or other it was fit they should have particular Souls for the multiplying of the sense of those enjoyments which the transcendent Wisdome of the Creatour has contrived 8. I have now plainly enough set down what I mean by the Spirit of
are nothing but meer Matter That the whole Body cannot be the Common Sensorium 3. Nor the Orifice of the Stomack 4. Nor the Heart 5. Nor the Brain 6. Nor the Membranes 7. Nor the Septum lucidum 8. Nor Regius his small and perfectly solid Particle 9. The probability of the Conarion being the common Seat of Sense 154 Chap. 5. 1. How Perception of external Objects Spontaneous Motion Memory and Imagination are pretended to be performed by the Conarion Spirits and Muscles without a Soul 2. That the Conarion devoid of a Soul cannot be the common Percipient demonstrated out of Des-Cartes himself 3. That the Conarion with the Spirits and organization of the Parts of the Body is not a sufficient Principle of Spontaneous motion without a Soul 4. A description of the use of the Valvulae in the Nerves of the Muscles for Spontaneous motion 5. The insufficiency of this contrivance for that purpose 6. A further demonstration of the insufficiency thereof from whence is clearly evinced that Brutes have Souls 7. That Memory cannot be salved the way above described 8. Nor Imagination 9. A Distribution out of Des-Cartes of the Functions in us some appertaining to the Body and others to the Soul 10. The Authors Observations thereupon 161 Chap. 6. 1. That no part of the Spinal Marrow can be the Common Sensorium without a Soul in the Body 2. That the Animal Spirits are more likely to be that Common Percipient 3. But yet it is demonstrable they are not 4. As not being so much as capable of Sensation 5. Nor of directing Motion into the Muscles 6. Much less of Imagination and rational Invention 7. Nor of Memory 8. An answer to an Evasion 9. The Authors reason why he has confuted so particularly all the Suppositions of the Seat of Common Sense when few of them have been asserted with the exclusion of a Soul 173 Chap. 7. 1. His enquiry after the Seat of Common Sense upon supposition there is a Soul in the Body 2. That there is some particular part in the Body that is the Seat of Common Sense 3. A general division of their Opinions concerning the place of Common Sense 4. That of those that place it out of the Head there are two sorts 5. The Invalidity of Helmont 's reasons whereby he would prove the Orifice of the Stomack to be the principal Seat of the Soul 6. An answer to Helmont 's stories for that purpose 7. A further confutation out of his own concessions 8. Mr. Hobbs his Opinion confuted that makes the Heart the Seat of Common Sense 9. A further confutation thereof from Experience 10. That the Common Sense is seated somewhere in the Head 11. A caution for the choice of the particular place thereof 12. That the whole Brain is not it 13. Nor Regius his small solid Particle 14. Nor any external Membrane of the Brain nor the Septum Lucidum 15. The three most likely places 16. Objections against Cartesius his Opinion concerning the Conarion answered 17. That the Conarion is not the Seat of Common Sense 18. Nor that part of the Spinal Marrow where the Nerves are conceived to concurre but the Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain 182 Chap. 8. 1. The first reason of his Opinion the convenient Situation of these Spirits 2. The second that the Spirits are the immediate instrument of the Soul in all her functions 3. The proof of the second Reason from the general authority of Philosophers and particularly of Hippocrates 4. From our Sympathizing with the changes of the Aire 5. From the celerity of Motion and Cogitation 6. From what is observed generally in the Generation of things 7. From Regius his experiment of a Snail in a glass 8. From the running round of Images in a Vertigo 9. From the constitution of the Eye and motion of the Spirits there 10. From the dependency of the actions of the Soul upon the Body whether in Meditation or corporeal Motion 11. From the recovery of Motion and Sense into a stupified part 12. And lastly from what is observed in swooning fits of paleness and sharpness of visage c. 13. The inference from all this That the Spirits in the fourth Ventricle are the seat of Common Sense and that the main use of the Brain and Nerves is to preserve the Spirits 198 Chap. 9. 1. Several Objections against Animal Spirits 2. An Answer to the first Objection touching the Porosity of the Nerves 3. To the second and third from the Extravasation of the Spirits and pituitous Excrements found in the Brain 4. To the fourth fetcht from the incredible swiftness of motion in the Spirits 5. To the last from Ligation 6. Undeniable Demonstrations that there are Animal Spirits in the Ventricles of the Brain 209 Chap. 10. 1. That the Soul is not confined to the Common Sensorium 2. The first Argument from the Plastick power of the Soul 3. Which is confirmed from the gradual dignity of the Souls Faculties of which this Plastick is the lowest 4. External Sensation the next 5. After that Imagination and then Reason 6. The second Argument from Passions and Sympathies in Animals 7. An illustration of the manner of natural Magick 8. The third Argument from the Perception of Pain in the exteriour parts of the Body 9. The fourth and last from the nature of Sight 215 Chap. 11. 1. That neither the Soul without the Spirits nor the Spirits without the presence of the Soul in the Organ are sufficient causes of Sensation 2. A brief declaration how Sensation is made 3. How Imagination 4. Of Reason and Memory and whether there be any Marks in the Brain 5. That the Spirits are the immediate Instrument of the Soul in Memory also and how Memory arises 6. As also Forgetfulness 7. How spontaneous Motion is performed 8. How we walk sing and play though thinking of something else 9. That though the Spirits be not alike fine every where yet the Sensiferous Impression will pass to the Common Sensorium 10. That there is an Heterogeneity in the very Soul her self and what it is in her we call the Root the Centre and the Eye and what the Rayes and Branches 11. That the sober and allowable Distribution of her into Parts is into Perceptive and Plastick 226 Chap. 12. 1. An Answer to an Objection That our Arguments will as well prove the Immortality of the Souls of Brutes as of Men. 2. Another Objection inferring the Praeexistence of Brutes Souls and consequently of ours 3. The first Answer to the Objection 4. The second Answer consisting of four parts 5. First That the Hypothesis of Praeexistence is more agreeable to Reason then any other Hypothesis 6. And not onely so but that it is very solid in it self 7. That the Wisdome and Goodness of God argue the truth thereof 8. As also the face of Providence in the World 9. The second part of the second Answer That the Praeexistence of the Soul has the suffrage
Substance residing in us distinct from the Body But I shall not content my self here but for a more full discovery of her Nature and Faculties I shall advance further and search out her chief Seat in the Body where and from whence she exercises her most noble Functions and after enquire whether she be confined to that part thereof alone or whether she be spred through all our members and lastly consider after what manner she sees feels hears imagines remembers reasons and moves the Body For beside that I shall make some good use of these discoveries for further purpose it is also in it self very pleasant to have in readiness a rationall and cohaerent account and a determinate apprehension of things of this nature CHAP. VII 1. His enquiry after the Seat of Common Sense upon supposition there is a Soule in the Body 2. That there is some particular part in the Body that is the Seat of Common Sense 3. A generall division of their Opinions concerning the place of Common Sense 4. That of those that place it out of the Head there are two sorts 5. The Invalidity of Helmont's reasons whereby he would prove the Orifice of the Stomack to be the principall Seat of the Soule 6. An Answer to Helmont's storyes for that purpose 7. A further confutation out of his own concessions 8. Mr. Hobbs his Opinion confuted that makes the Heart the Seat of Common Sense 9. A further confutation thereof from Experience 10. That the Common Sense is seated somewhere in the Head 11. A caution for the choice of the particular place thereof 12. That the whole Brain is not it 13. Nor Regius his small solid Particle 14. Nor any externall Membrane of the Brain nor the Septum Lucidum 15. The three most likely places 16. Objections against Cartesius his Opinion concerning the Conarion answered 17. That the Conarion is not the Seat of Common Sense 18. Nor that part of the Spinall Marrow where the Nerves are conceived to concurre but the Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain 1. IT will therefore be requisite for us to resume the former Opinions altering the Hypothesis and to examine which of them is most reasonable supposing there be a Substance immateriall or Soule in man 2. That there is some particular or restrained Seat of the Common Sense is an Opinion that even all Philosophers and Physitians are agreed upon And it is an ordinary Comparison amongst them that the Externall Senses and the Common Sense considered together are like a Circle with five lines drawn from the Circumference to the Centre Wherefore as it has been obvious for them to finde out particular Organs for the externall Senses so they have also attempted to assign some distinct part of the Body for to be an Organ of the Common Sense that is to say as they discovered Sight to be seated in the Eye Hearing in the Eare Smelling in the Nose c. so they conceived that there is some part of the Body wherein Seeing Hearing and all other Perceptions meet together as the lines of a circle in the centre and that there the Soule does also judge and discern of the difference of the Objects of the outward Senses They have justly therefore excluded all the Externall parts of the Body from the lightest suspition of any capacity of undergoing such a function as is thus generall they being all employed in a more particular task which is to be the Organ of some one of these five outward Senses and to be affected no otherwise then by what is impressed upon themselves and chiefly from their proper Objects amongst which five Touch properly so called has the greatest share it being as large as the Skin that covers us and reaching as deep as any Membrane and Nerve in the limbs and trunk of the Body besides all the Exteriour parts of the Head All which can no more see then the Eye can hear or the Eare can smell 3. Besides this all those Arguments that doe so clearly evince that the place of Common Sense is somewhere in the Head is a plain demonstration that the whole Body cannot be the Seat thereof and what those Arguments are you shall hear anon For all those Opinions that have pitched on any one Part for the Seat of Common Sense being to be divided into two Ranks to wit either such as assign some particular place in the Body or else in the Head we will proceed in this order as first to confute those that have made choice of any part for the Seat of Common Sense out of the Head and then in the second place we will in generall shew that the common Sensorium must be in some part of the Head and lastly of those many opinions concerning what part of the Head this common Sensorium should be those which seem less reasonable being rejected we shall pitch upon what we conceive the most unexceptionable 4. Those that place the Common Sensorium out of the Head have seated it either in the upper Orifice of the Stomack or in the Heart The former is Van-Helmont's Opinion the other Mr. Hobbs his 5. As for Van-Helmont there is nothing he alledges for his Opinion but may be easily answered That which mainly imposed upon him was the exceeding Sensibility of that part which Nature made so that as a faithfull sagacious Porter it might admit nothing into the Stomack that might prove mischievous or troublesome to the Body From this tender Sensibility great offences to it may very well cause Swoonings and Apoplexies and cessations of Sense But Fear and Joy and Grief have dispatched some very suddainly when yet the first entrance of that deadly stroak has been at the Eare or the Eye from some unsupportable ill newes or horrid spectacle And the harsh handling of an angry Sore or the treading on a Corn on the Toe may easily cast some into a swoon and yet no man will ever imagine the Seat of the Common Sense to be placed in the Foot In fine there is no more reason to think the Common Sensorium is in the mouth of the Stomack because of the Sensible Commotions we feel there then that it is seated in the Stars because we so clearly perceive their Light as Des-Cartes has well answered upon like occasion Nor can Phrensies and Madnesses though they may sometimes be observed to take their rise from thence any more prove that it is the Seat of the Common Sense then the Furor uterinus Apoplexies Epilepsies and Syncopes proceeding from the Wombe doe argue that the common Sensorium of Women lyes in that part 6. And if we consider the great Sympathy betwixt the Orifice of the Stomack and the Heart whose Pathemata are so alike and conjoyned that the Ancients have given one name to both parts calling them promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the pains of the Stomack 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as also that the Heart is that part
may easily abstain from winking But if fear surprise him the Soule is to be entitled to the action and not the meer Mechanisme of the Body Wherefore this is no proof that the Phaenomena of Passions with their consequences may be salved in brute Beasts by pure Mechanicks and therefore neither in Men but it is evident that they arise in us against both our Will and Appetite For who would bear the tortures of Fears and Jealousies if he could avoid it And therefore the Soule sends not nor determines the Spirits thus to her own Torture as she resides in the Head Whence it is plain that it is the effect of her as she resides in the Heart and Stomack which sympathize with the horrid representation in the Common Sensorium by reason of the exquisite unity of the Soul with her self of the continuity of Spirits in the Body the necessary instrument of all her Functions And there is good reason the Heart Stomack should be so much affected they being the chief Seats of those Faculties that maintain the life of the Body the danger whereof is the most eminent Object of Fear in any Animal 7. From this Principle I conceive that not onely the Sympathy of parts in one particular Subject but of different and distant Subjects may be understood such as is betwixt the party wounded and the Knife or Sword that wounded him besmeared with the Weapon-salve and kept in a due temper Which certainly is not purely Mechanical but Magical though not in an unlawful sense that is to say it is not to be resolved into meer Matter of what thinness or subtilty soever you please but into the Unity of the Soul of the Universe and Continuity of the subtile Matter which answers to our Animal Spirits And in this sense it is that Plotinus sayes that the World is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grand Magus or Enchanter And I doe not question but that upon this score meerly without the association of any Familiar Spirit several odde things may be done for evil as well as good For this Spirit of the World has Faculties that work not by Election but fatally or naturally as several Gamaitus we meet withall in Nature seem somewhat obscurely to subindicate Of this Principle we shall speak more fully in its due place 8. But we have yet a more clear discovery that our Soul is not confined to any one part of the Head but possesses the whole Body from the Perception of Pain in the parts thereof For it is plainly impossible that so high a torture as is felt but in the pricking of a Pin can be communicated to the Centre of Perception upon a meer Mechanical account For whether the immediate Instrument of Sense be the Pith of the Nerves as Des-Cartes would have it or whether it be the Spirits as is most true it is ridiculous to think that by the forcible parting of what was joyned together at ease when this case is not communicated to either the Spirits or Pith of the Nerves from the place of the Puncture to the very seat of Common Sense that the Soul there seated should feel so smart a torment unless that her very Essence did reach to the part where the pain is felt to be For then the reason of this is plain that it is the Unity of Soul possessing the whole Body and the Continuity of Spirits that is the cause thereof And it is no wonder if the continuation and natural composure of the Spirits be Rest and Ease to the Soul that a violent disjoyning and bruising of them and baring the Soul of them as I may so speak should cause a very harsh and torturous sense in the Centre of Perception This Argument bears undeniable Evidence with it if we doe but consider the fuzziness of the Pith of the Nerves and the fluidity of the Spirits and what little stress or crouding so small a thing as a Pin or Needle can make in such soft and liquid Matter CHAP. XI 1. That neither the Soul without the Spirits nor the Spirits without the presence of the Soul in the Organ are sufficient causes of Sensation 2. A brief declaration how Sensation is made 3. How Imagination 4. Of Reason and Memory and whether there be any Marks in the Brain 5. That the Spirits are the immediate Instrument of the Soul in Memory also and how Memory arises 6. As also Forgetfulness 7. How spontaneous Motion is performed 8. How we walk sing and play though thinking of something else 9. That though the Spirits be not alike fine every where yet the Sensiferous Impression will pass to the Common Sensorium 10. That there is an Heterogeneity in the very Soul her self and what it is in her we call the Root the Centre and the Eye and what the Rayes and Branches 11. That the sober and allowable Distribution of her into Parts is into Perceptive and Plastick 1. AFter our evincing that the Soul is not confined to the Common Sensorium but does essentially reach all the Organs of the Body it will be more easy to determine the Nature of Sensation and other Operations we mentioned For we have already demonstrated these two things of main consequence That the Spirits are not sufficient of themselves for these Functions nor the Soul of her self without the assistance of the Spirits as is plain in the interception or disjunction of the Spirits by Ligature or Obstruction whence it is that Blindness sometimes happens meerly for that the Optick Nerve is obstructed 2. Wherefore briefly to dispatch our third Querie I say in general That Sensation is made by the arrival of motion from the Object to the Organ where it is received in all the circumstances we perceive it in and conveyed by vertue of the Souls presence there assisted by her immediate Instrument the Spirits by vertue of whose continuity to those in the Common Sensorium the Image or Impress of every Object is faithfully transmitted thither 3. As for Imagination there is no question but that Function is mainly exercised in the chief seat of the Soul those purer Animal Spirits in the fourth Ventricle of the Brain I speak especially of that Imagination which is most free such as we use in Romantick Inventions or such as accompany the more severe Meditations and Disquisitions in Philosophy or any other Intellectuall entertainments For Fasting fresh Aire moderate Wine and all things that tend to an handsome supply and depuration of the Spirits make our thoughts more free subtile and clear 4. Reason is so involved together with Imagination that we need say nothing of it apart by it self Memory is a Faculty of a more peculiar consideration and if the Pith of the Brain contribute to the Functions of any power of the mind more then by conserving the Animal Spirits it is to this But that the Brain should be stored with distinct images whether they consist of the Flexures of the supposed Fibrillae or the orderly
AEthereal for ever 8. But this makes little to the clearing of the manner of their descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which cannot be better understood then by considering their Union with the Body generated or indeed with any kinde of Body whatever where the Soul is held captive and cannot quit her self thereof by the free imperium of her own Imagination and Will For what can be the cause of this cohaesion the very essence of the Soul being so easily penetrative of Matter and the dimensions of all Matter being alike penetrable every where For there being no more Body or Matter in a Vessel filled with Lead then when it is full of Water nor when full with Water then when with Aire or what other subtiler Body soever that can be imagined in the Universe it is manifest that the Crassities of Matter is every where alike and alike penetrable and passable to the Soul And therefore it is unconceivable how her Union should be so with any of it as that she should not be able at any time to glide freely from one part thereof to another as she pleases It is plain therefore that this Union of the Soul with Matter does not arise from any such gross Mechanical way as when two Bodies stick one in another by reason of any toughness and viscosity or straight commissure of parts but from a congruity of another nature which I know not better how to term then Vital which Vital Congruity is chiefly in the Soul it self it being the noblest Principle of Life but is also in the Matter and is there nothing but such modification thereof as fits the Plastick part of the Soul and tempts out that Faculty into act 9. Not that there is any Life in the Matter with which this in the Soul should sympathize and unite but it is termed Vital because it makes the Matter a congruous Subject for the Soul to reside in and exercise the functions of life For that which has no life it self may tie to it that which has As some men are said to be tied by the teeth or tied by the ear when they are detained by the pleasure they are struck with from good Musick or delicious Viands But neither is that which they eat alive nor that which makes the Musick neither the Instrument nor the Air that conveys the sound For there is nothing in all this but meer Matter and corporeal motion and yet our vital functions are affected thereby Now as we see that the Perceptive part of the Soul is thus vitally affected with that which has no life in it so it is reasonable that the Plastick part thereof may be so too That there may be an Harmony betwixt Matter thus and thus modified and that Power that we call Plastick that is utterly devoid of all Perception And in this alone consists that which we call Vital Congruity in the prepared Matter either to be organized or already shaped into the perfect form of an Animal 10. And that Vital Congruity which is in the Soul I mean in the Plastick part thereof is analogous to that Pleasure that is perceived by the Sense or rather to the capacity of receiving it when the Sense is by agreeable motions from without or in the Body it self very much gratified and that whether the Minde will or no. For there are some Touches that will in their Perception seem pleasant whether our Judgement would have them so or not What this is to the Perceptive part of the Soul that other Congruity of Matter is to the Plastick And therefore that which ties the Soul and this or that Matter together is an unresistible and unperceptible pleasure if I may so call it arising from the congruity of Matter to the Plastick faculty of the Soul which Congruity in the Matter not failing nor that in the Soul the Union is at least as necessary as the continuation of eating and drinking so long as Hunger and Thirst continues and the Meat and Drink proves good But either satiety in the Stomack or some ill tast in the Meat may break the congruity on either side and then the action will cease with the pleasure thereof And upon this very account may a Soul be conceived to quit her aiery Vehicle within a certain period of Ages as the Platonists hold she does without any violent precipitation of her self out of it 11. What are the strings or cords that tie the Soul to the Body or to what Vehicle else soever I have declared as clearly as I can From which it will be easy to understand the manner of her descent For assuredly the same cords or strings that tie her there may draw her thither Where the carcass is there will the Eagles be gathered Not that she need use her Perceptive faculty in her descent as Hawks and Kites by their sight or smelling fly directly to the lure or the prey but she being within the Atmosphear as I may so call it of Generation and so her Plastick power being reached and toucht by such an invisible reek as Birds of prey are that smell out their food at a distance she may be fatally carried all Perceptions ceasing in her to that Matter that is so fit a receptacle for her to exercise her efformative power upon For this Magick-sphere as I may so term it that has this power of conjuring down Souls into earthly Bodies the nearer the Centre the vertue is the stronger and therefore the Soul will never cease till she has slided into the very Matter that sent out those rays or subtile reek to allure her From whence it is easy to conceive that the Souls of Brutes also though they be not able to exercise their Perceptive faculty out of a terrestrial body yet they may infallibly finde the way again into the world as often as Matter is fitly prepared for generation And this is one Hypothesis and most intelligible to those that are pleased so much with the opinion of those large Sphears they conceive of emissary Atomes There is also another which is the Power and Activity of the Spirit of Nature or Inferiour Soul of the World who is as fit an Agent to transmit particular Souls as she is to move the parts of Matter But of this hereafter 12. What has been said is enough for the present to illustrate the pretended obscurity and unconceivableness of this Mystery So that I have fully made good all the four parts of my Answer to that Objection that would have supplanted the force of my strongest Arguments for the Souls Immortality and have clearly proved that though this sequel did necessarily result from them That the Souls both of Men and Beasts did Prae-exist yet to unprejudiced reason there is no Absurdity nor Inconvenience at all in the Opinion And therefore this Obstacle being removed I shall the more chearfully proceed to the demonstrating of the Souls actual Separation from the Body CHAP. XV. 1. What is meant by
error ac timor multum in hominibus possunt will prevail more with them then all the Stories the same Authour writes of Apparitions or whatever any one else can adde unto them And others that doe admit of these things praeconceptions from Education That the Soul when she departs this life is suddenly either twitched up into the Coelum Empyreum or hurried down headlong towards the Centre of the Earth makes the Apparitions of the Ghosts of men altogether incredible to them they always substituting in their place some Angel or Devil which must represent their persons themselves being not at leisure to act any such part 8. But Misconceit and Prejudice though it may hinder the force of an Argument with those that are in that manner entangled yet Reason cannot but take place with them that are free To whom I dare appeal whether considering the aereal Vehicles of Souls which are common to them with other Genii so that whatever they are fancied to doe in their stead they may perform themselves as also how congruous it is that those persons that are most concerned when it is in their power should act in their own affairs as in detecting the Murtherer in disposing their estate in rebuking injurious Executors in visiting and counselling their Wives and Children in forewarning them of such and such courses with other matters of like sort to which you may adde the profession of the Spirit thus appearing of being the Soul of such an one as also the similitude of person and that all this adoe is in things very just and serious unfit for a Devil with that care and kindness to promote and as unfit for a good Genius it being below so noble a nature to tell a Lie especially when the affair may be as effectually transacted without it I say I dare appeal to any one whether all these things put together and rightly weighed the violence of prejudice not pulling down the ballance it will not be certainly carried for the present cause and whether any indifferent Judge ought not to conclude if these Stories that are so frequent every where and in all Ages concerning the Ghosts of men appearing be but true that it is true also that it is their Ghosts and that therefore the Souls of men subsist and act after they have left these earthly Bodies CHAP. XVII 1. The preeminence of Arguments drawn from Reason above those from Story 2. The first step toward a Demonstration of Reason that the Soul acts out of her Body for that she is an immaterial Substance separable therefrom 3. The second That the immediate instruments for Sense Motion and Organization of the Body are certain subtile and tenuious Spirits 4. A comparison betwixt the Soul in the Body and the AEreal Genii 5. Of the nature of Daemons from the account of Marcus the Eremite and how the Soul is presently such having once left this Body 6. An Objection concerning the Souls of Brutes to which is answered First by way of concession 7. Secondly by confuting the Arguments for the former concession 8. That there is no rational doubt at all of the Humane Soul acting after death 9. A further Argument of her activity out of this Body from her conflicts with it while she is in it 10. As also from the general hope and belief of all Nations that they shall live after death 1. BUT we proceed now to what is less subject to the evasions and misinterpretations of either the Profane or Superstitious For none but such as will profess themselves meer Brutes can cast off the Decrees and Conclusions of Philosophy and Reason though they think that in things of this nature they may with a great deal of applause and credit refuse the testimony of other mens senses if not of their own all Apparitions being with them nothing but the strong surprisals of Melancholy and Imagination But they cannot with that ease nor credit silence the Deductions of Reason by saying it is but a Fallacy unlesse they can shew the Sophisme which they cannot doe where it is not 2. To carry on therefore our present Argument in a rational way and by degrees we are first to consider That according as already has been clearly demonstrated there is a Substance in us which is ordinarily called the Soul really distinct from the Body for otherwise how can it be a Substance And therefore it is really and locally separable from the Body Which is a very considerable step towards what we aim at 3. In the next place we are to take notice That the immediate Instrument of the Soul are those tenuious and aereal particles which they ordinarily call the Spirits that these are they by which the Soul hears sees feels imagines remembers reasons and by moving which or at least directing their motion she moves likewise the Body and by using them or some subtile Matter like them she either compleats or at least contributes to the Bodies Organization For that the Soul should be the Vital Architect of her own house that close connexion and sure possession she is to have of it distinct and secure from the invasion of any other particular Soul seems no slight Argument And yet that while she is exercising that Faculty she may have a more then ordinary Union or Implication with the Spirit of Nature or the Soul of the World so far forth as it is Plastick seems not unreasonable and therefore is asserted by Plotinus and may justly be suspected to be true if we attend to the prodigious effects of the Mothers Imagination derived upon the Infant which sometimes are so very great that unless she raised the Spirit of Nature into consent they might well seem to exceed the power of any Cause I shall abstain from producing any Examples till the proper place in the mean time I hope I may be excused from any rashness in this assignation of the cause of those many and various Signatures found in Nature so plainly pointing at such a Principle in the World as I have intimated before 4. But to return and cast our eye upon the Subject in hand It appears from the two precedent Conclusions that the Soul considered as invested immediately with this tenuious Matter we speak of which is her inward Vehicle has very little more difference from the aereal Genii then a man in a Prison from one that is free The one can onely see and suck air through the Grates of the Prison and must be annoyed with all the stench and unwholsome fumes of that sad habitation whenas the other may walk and take the fresh air where he finds it most commodious and agreeable This difference there is betwixt the Genii and an incorporated Soul The Soul as a man faln into a deep pit who can have no better Water nor Air nor no longer enjoyment of the Sun and his chearful light and warmth then the measure and quality of the pit will permit him so she once immured
Fienus has defined in this matter who has I think behaved himself as cautiously and modestly as may be there will be enough granted to assure us of what we aime at For he does acknowledge that the Imagination of the Mother may change the figure of the Foetus so as to make it beare a resemblance though not absolutely perfect of an Ape Pig or Dog or any such like Animal The like he affirms of colours haires and excrescencies of several sorts that it may produce also what is very like or analogous to horns and hoofs and that it may encrease the bigness and number of the parts of the Body 4. And though he does reject several of the examples he has produced out of Authors yet those which he admits for true are Indications plain enough what we may expect in the Vehicle of a departed Soule or Daemon As that of the Hairy girle out of Marcus Damascenus that other out of Guilielmus Paradinus of a Child whose skin and nails resembled those of a Bear and a third out of Balduinus Ronsaeus of one born with many excrescencies coloured and figured like those in a Turky-cock and a fourth out of Pareus of one who was born with an head like a Frog as lastly that out of Avicenna of chickens with hawks heads All which deviations of the Plastick power hapned from the force of Imagination in the Females either in the time of Conception or gestation of their young 5. But he scruples of giving assent to others which yet are assented to by very learned writers As that of Black-moores being born of white Parents and white Children of black by the exposal of pictures representing an AEthiopian or European which those two excellent Physitians Fernelius and Sennertus both agree to He rejects also that out of Cornelius Gemma of a Child that was born with his Forehead wounded and running with blood from the husbands threatning his wife when she was big with a drawn sword which he directed towards her Forehead Which will not seem so incredible if we consider what Sennertus records of his own knowledg viz. That a Woman with child seeing a Butcher divide a Swines head with his Cleaver brought forth her Child with its face cloven in the upper jaw the palate and upper lip to the very nose 6. But the most notorious instances of this sort are those of Helmont De injectis materialibus The one of a Taylors wife at Mechlin who standing at her doore and seeing a souldiers hand cut off in a quarrel presently fell into labour being struck with horrour at the spectacle and brought forth a child with one hand the other arm bleeding without one of which wound the infant died by the great expense of blood Another woman the wife of one Marcus De Vogeler Merchant of Antwerp in the year 1602. seeing a souldier begging who had lost his right arme in Ostend-siege which he shewed to the people still bloody fell presently into labour and brought forth a Daughter with one arme struck off nothing left but a bloody stump to employ the Chirurgions skill this woman married afterwards to one Hoochcamer Merchant of Amsterdam and was yet alive in the year 1638. as Helmont writes He adds a third example of another Merchants wife which he knew who hearing that on a morning there were thirteen men to be beheaded this hapned at Antwerp in Duke D' Alva his time she had the curiosity to see the execution She getting therefore a place in the Chamber of a certain widow-woman a friend of hers that dwelt in the market-place beheld this Tragick spectacle upon which she suddainly fell into labour and brought forth a perfectly-formed infant onely the head was wanting but the neck bloody as their bodies she beheld that had their heads cut off And that which does still advance the wonder is that the hand arme and head of these infants were none of them to be found From whence Van-Helmont would infer a penetration of corporeal dimensions but how groundlessly I will not dispute here 7. If these Stories he recites be true as I must confess I doe not well know how to deny them he reporting them with so honest and credible circumstances they are notable examples of the power of Imagination and such as doe not onely win belief to themselves but also to others that Fienus would reject not of this nature onely we are upon of wounding the body of the Infant but also of more exorbitant conformation of parts of which we shall bring an instance or two anon In the mean time while I more carefully contemplate this strange virtue and power of the Soule of the Mother in which there is no such measure of purification or exaltedness that it should be able to act such miracles as I may call them rather then natural effects I cannot but be more then usually inclinable to think that the Plastick faculty of the Soule of the Infant or whatever accessions there may be from the Imagination of the Mother is not the adaequate cause of the formation of the Foetus a thing which Plotinus somewhere intimates by the by as I have already noted viz. That the Soule of the World or the Spirit of Nature assists in this performance Which if it be true we have discovered a Cause proportionable to so prodigious an Effect For we may easily conceive that the deeply-impassionated fancy of the Mother snatches away the Spirit of Nature into consent which Spirit may rationally be acknowledged to have a hand in the efformation of all vital Beings in the World and haply be the onely Agent in forming of all manner of Plants In which kinde whether she exert her power in any other Elements then Earth and Water I will conclude no further then that there may be a possibility thereof in the calmer Regions of Aire and AEther To the right understanding of which conjecture some light will offer it self from what we have said concerning the Visibility and Consistency of the aerial Daemons in their occursions one with another 8. But this is not the onely Argument that would move one to think that this Spirit of Nature intermeddles with the Efformation of the Foetus For those Signatures that are derived on the Infant from the Mothers fancy in the act of Conception cannot well be understood without this Hypothesis For what can be the Subject of that Signature Not the Plastick part of the Soul of the Mother for that it is not the Mothers Soul that efforms the Embryo as Sennertus ingeniously conjectures from the manner of the efformation of Birds which is in their Egges distinct from the Hen and they may as well be hatched without any Hen at all a thing ordinarily practised in AEgypt nor the Body of the Embryo for it has yet no Body nor its Soul for the Soul if we believe Aristotle is not yet present there But the Spirit of Nature is present every where which snatcht into
these parts and transverse penetration and transcursion of secondary substance thorough this whole Sphere of life which we call a Spirit Nor need we wonder that so full an Orbe should swell out from so subtil and small a point as the Center of this Spirit is supposed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle somewhere sayes of the mind of man And besides it is but what is seen in some sort to the very eye in light how large a spheare of aire a little spark will illuminate 5. This is the pure Idea of a created Spirit in general concerning which if there be yet any cavill to be made it can be none other then what is perfectly common to it and to Matter that is the unimaginableness of Points and smallest Particles and how what is discerpible cannot at all hang together but this not hindering Matter from actuall existence there is no reason that it should any way pretend to the inferring of the impossibility of the existence of a Spirit by Axiome 7. But the most lubricous supposition that we goe upon here is not altogether so intricate as those difficulties in Matter For if that be but granted in which I find no absurdity That a Particle of Matter may be so little that it is utterly uncapable of being made less it is plain that one and the same thing though intellectually divisible may yet be really indiscerpible And indeed it is not only possible but it seems necessary that this should be true For though we should acknowledg that Matter were discerpible in infinitum yet supposing a Cause of Infinite distinct perception and as Infinite power and God is such this Cause can reduce this capacity of infinite discerpibleness of Matter into act that is to say actually and at once discerp it or disjoyn it into so many particles as it is discerpible into From whence it will follow that one of these particles reduced to this perfect Parvitude is then utterly indiscerpible and yet intellectually divisible otherwise magnitude would consist of meer points which would imply a contradiction We have therefore plainly demonstrated by reason that Matter consists of parts indiscerpible and therefore there being no other Faculty to give suffrage against it for neither sense nor any common notion can contradict it it remains by Axiome 5. that the Conclusion is true 6. What some would object from Reason that these perfect Parvitudes being acknowledged still intellectually divisible must still have parts into which they are divisible and therefore be still discerpible to this it is answered That division into parts does not imply any discerpibility because the parts conceived in one of these Minima Corporalia as I may so call them are rather essentiall or formall parts then integrall and can no more actually be dissevered then Sense and Reason from the Soul of a man For it is of the very Essence of Matter to be divisible but it is not at all included in the essence thereof to be discerpible and therefore where discerpibility fails there is no necessity that divisibility should faile also See the Preface Sect. 3. 7. As for the trouble of spurious suggestions or representations from the Fancy as if these perfect Parvitudes were round Bodyes and that therefore there would be Triangular intervals betwixt void of Matter they are of no moment in this case she alwayes representing a Discerpible magnitude instead of an Indiscerpible one Wherefore she bringing in a false evidence her testimony is to be rejected nay if she could perplex the cause far worse she was not to be heard by Axiome the 4. Wherefore Fancy being unable to exhibite the object we consider in its due advantages for ought we know these perfect Parvitudes may lye so close together that they have no intervals betwixt nay it seems necessary to be so For if there were any such intervalls they were capable of particles less then these least of all which is a contradiction in Reason and a thing utterly impossible But if we should gratify Fancy so far as to admit of these intervals the greatest absurdity would be that we must admit an insensible Vacuum which no Faculty will be able ever to confute But it is most rationall to admit none and more consonant to our determination concerning these Minima Corporalia as I call them whose largeness is to be limited to the least reall touch of either a Globe on a Plain or a Cone on a Plain or a Globe on a Globe if you conceive any reall touch less then another let that be the measure of these Minute Realities in Matter From whence it will follow they must touch a whole side at once and therefore can never leave any empty intervals Nor can we imagine any Angulosities or round protuberancies in a quantity infinitely little more then we can in one infinitely great as I have already declared in my Preface I must confess a mans Reason in this speculation is mounted far beyond his Imagination but there being worse intricacies in Theories acknowledged constantly to be true it can be no prejudice to the present Conclusion by the 4. and 7. Axiomes 8. Thus have we cleared up a full and distinct notion of a Spirit with so unexceptionable accuracy that no Reason can pretend to assert it impossible nor unintelligible But if the Theory thereof may seem more operose and tedious to impatient wits and the punctuality of the description the more hazardous and incredible as if it were beyond our Faculties to make so precise a Conclusion in a subject so obscure they may ease their understanding by contenting themselves with what we have set down Cap. 2. Sect. 11 12. and remember that that Wisdome and Power that created all things can make them of what nature He pleases and that if God will that there shall be a Creature that is penetrable and indiscerpible that it is as easy a thing for him to make one so of its own nature as one impenetrable and discerpible and indue it with what other properties he pleases according to his own will and purpose which induments being immediately united with the Subject they are in Reason can make no further demand how they are there by the 9. Axiome CHAP. VII 1. Of the Self-motion of a Spirit 2. Of Self-penetration 3. Of Self-contraction and dilatation 4. The power of penetrating of Matter 5. The power of moving 6. And of altering the Matter 1. WE have proved the Indiscerpibility of a Spirit as well in Center as Circumference as well in the Primary as Secondary Substance thereof to be a very consistent and congruous Notion The next property is Self-motion which must of necessity be an Attribute of something or other For by Self-motion I understand nothing else but Self-activity which must appertain to a Subject active of it self Now what is simply active of it self can no more cease to be active then to Be which is a sign that Matter
is not active of it self because it is reducible to Rest Which is an Argument not only that Self-activity belongs to a Spirit but that there is such a thing as a Spirit in the world from which activity is communicated to Matter And indeed if Matter as Matter had motion nothing would hold together but Flints Adamant Brass Iron yea this whole Earth would suddenly melt into a thinner Substance then the subtil Aire or rather it never had been condensated together to this consistency we finde it But this is to anticipate my future purpose of proving That there are Spirits existing in the world It had been sufficient here to have asserted That Self-motion or Self-activity is as conceivable to appertain to Spirit as Body which is plain at first sight to any man that appeales to his own Faculties Nor is it at all to be scrupled at that any thing should be allowed to move it self because our adversaries that say there is nothing but Matter in the world must of necessity as I have intimated already confess that this Matter moves it self though it be very incongruous so to affirm 2. The congruity and possibility of Self-penetration in a created Spirit is to be conceived partly from the limitableness of the Subject and partly from the foregoing attributes of Indiscerpibility and Self-motion For Self-penetration cannot belong to God because it is impossible any thing should belong to him that implyes imperfection and Self-penetration cannot be without the lessening of the presence of that which does penetrate it self or the implication that some parts of that essence are not so well as they may be which is a contradiction in a Being which is absolutely perfect From the Attributes of Indiscerpibility and Self-motion to which you may adde Penetrability from the generall notion of a Spirit it is plain that such a Spirit as we define having the power of Motion upon the whole extent of its essence may also determine this Motion according to the Property of its own nature and therefore if it determine the motion of the exteriour parts inward they will return inward towards the center of essentiall power which they may easily doe without resistance the whole Subject being penetrable and without damage it being also indiscerpible 3. From this Self-penetration we doe not only easily but necessarily understand Self-contraction and dilatation to arise For this self-moving Substance which we call a Spirit cannot penetrate it self but it must needs therewith contract it self nor restore it self again to it's former state but it does thereby dilate it self so that we need not at all insist upon these termes 4. That power which a Spirit has to penetrate Matter we may easily understand if we consider a Spirit only as a Substance whose immediate property is Activity For then it is not harder to imagine this Active Substance to pervade this or the other part of Matter then it is to conceive the pervading or disspreading of motion it self therein 6. The last Terme I put in the Definition of a Spirit is the power of altering the Matter which will necessarily follow from it's power of moving it or directing its motion For Alteration is nothing else but the varying of either the Figures or postures or the degrees of motion in the particles all which are nothing else but the results of locall motion Thus have we cleared the intelligibility and possibility of all the Termes that belong to the Notion of a created Spirit in generall at least of such as may be rationally conceived to be the causes of any visible Phaenomena in the world We will now descend to the defining of the chief Species thereof CHAP. VIII 1. Four main Species of Spirits 2. How they are to be defined 3. The definition of a Seminall Forme 4. Of the Soule of a Brute 5. Of the Soule of a Man 6. The difference betwixt the Soule of an Angel and an humane Soule 7. The definition of an Angelical Soule 8. Of the Platonicall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 9. That Des Cartes his Demonstration of the Existence of the Humane Soule does at least conclude the possibility of a Spirit 1. WE have enumerated four kindes of Spirits viz. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Seminall Formes the Soules of Brutes the Humane Soule and that Soule or Spirit which actuates or informes the vehicles of Angels For I look upon Angels to be as truly a compound Being consisting of Soule and Body as that of Men and Brutes Their Existence we shall not now goe about to prove for that belongs to another place My present design is onely to expound or define the notion of these things so far forth as is needful for the evincing that they are the Ideas or Notions of things which imply no contradiction or impossibility in their conception which will be very easy for us to perform the chief difficulty lying in that more General notion of a Spirit which we have so fully explained in the foregoing chapters 2. Now this General notion can be contracted into Kindes by no other Differences then such as may be called peculiar powers or properties belonging to one Spirit and excluded from another by the 8. Axiome From whence it will follow that if we describe these several kindes of Spirits by immediate and intrinsecall properties we have given as good Definitions of them as any one can give of any thing in the world 3. We will begin with what is most simple the Seminal Formes of things which for the present deciding nothing of their existence according to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 possibilis we define thus A Seminal Forme is a created Spirit organizing duely prepared matter into life and vegetation proper to this or the other kind of plant It is beyond my imagination what can be excepted against this description it containing nothing but what is very cohaerent and intelligible For in that it is a Spirit it can move Matter intrinsecally or at least direct the motion thereof But in that it is not an Omnipotent Spirit but Finite and Created it 's power may well be restrained to duely prepared Matter both for vital union and motion He that has made these particular Spirits varying their Faculties of Vital union according to the diversity of the preparation of Matter and so limiting the whole comprehension of them all that none of them may be able to be vitally joyned with any matter whatever and the same first Cause of all things that gives them a power of uniting with and moving of matter duely prepared may also set such lawes to this motion that when it lights on matter fit for it it will produce such and such a Plant that is to say it will shape the matter into such Figure Colour and other properties as we discover in them by our Senses 4. This is the first degree of Particular Life in the world if there be any purely of this degree
errour of separated essences they are thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it For seeing they will have these Formes to be real they are obliged to assign them some place But because they hold them incorporeal without all dimension of Quantity and all men know that Place is Dimension and not to be filled but by that which is corporeall they are driven to uphold their credit with a distinction that they are not indeed any where Circumscriptivè but Definitivé Which termes being meer words and in this occasion insignificant pass onely in Latine that the vanity of them might be concealed For the Circumscription of a thing is nothing else but the determination or defining of it's place and so both the termes of distinction are the same And in particular of the essence of man which they say is his Soule they affirm it to be all of it in his little finger and all of it in every other part how small soever of his Body and yet no more Soule in the whole Body then in any one of these parts Can any man think that God is served with such Absurdities And yet all this is necessary to believe to those that will believe the existence of an incorporeal Soule separated from the Body CHAP. X. 1. An Answer to the first Excerption 2. To the second 3. An Answer to the third 4. To the fourth Excerption 5. An Answer to the fifth 6. To the sixth 7. To the seventh 8. An Answer to the eighth and last 9. A brief Recapitulation of what has been said hitherto 1. WE have set down the chiefest passages in the Writings of Mr. Hobbs that confident Exploder of Immaterial Substances out of the world It remains now that we examine them and see whether the force of his Arguments beares any proportion to the firmness of his belief or rather mis-belief concerning these things To strip therefore the first Excerption of that long Ambages of words and to reduce it to a more plain and compendious forme of reasoning the force of his Argument lies thus That seeing every thing in the Universe is Body the Universe being nothing else but an Aggregate of Bodies Body and Substance are but names of one and the same thing it being called Body as it fills a place and Substance as it is the Subject of severall Alterations and Accidents Wherefore Body and Substance being all one Incorporeal Substance is no better sense then an Incorporeal Body which is a contradiction in the very termes But it is plain to all the world that this is not to prove but to suppose what is to be proved That the Universe is nothing else but an Aggregate of Bodyes When he has proved that we will acknowledge the sequel till then he has proved nothing and therefore this first argumentation must pass for nought 2. Let us examine the strength of the Second which certainly must be this if any at all That which has its originall meerly from Dreames Feares and Superstitious Faneyes has no reall existence in the world But Incorporeall Substances have no other Originall The Proposition is a Truth indubitable but the Assumption is as weak as the other is strong whether you understand it of the reall Originall of these Substances or of the Principles of our knowledge That they are And be their Originall what it will it is nothing to us but so far forth as it is cognoscible to us by Axiome first And therefore when he sayes they have no other Originall then that of our own Fancy he must be understood to affirme that there is no other principle of the knowledge of their Existence then that we vainly imagine them to be which is grossly false For it is not the Dreams and Feares of Melancholick and Superstitious persons from which Philosophers and Christians have argued the Existence of Spirits and Immaterial Substances but from the evidence of Externall Objects of Sense that is the ordinary Phaenomena of Nature in which there is discoverable so profound Wisdome and Counsell that they could not but conclude that the order of things in the world was from a higher Principle then the blind motions and jumblings of Matter and meer Corporeall Beings To which you may adde what usually they call Apparitions which are so far from being meerly the Dreams and Fancyes of the Superstitious that they are acknowledged by such as cannot but be deemed by most men over Atheisticall I mean Pomponatius and Cardan nay by Vaninus himself though so devoted to Atheisme that out of a perfect mad zeale to that despicable cause he died for it I omit to name the operations of the Soule which ever appeared to the wisest of all Ages of such a transcendent condition that they could not judge them to spring from so contemptible a Principle as bare Body or Matter Wherefore to decline all these and to make representation onely of Dreames and Fancyes to be the occasions of the world's concluding that there are Incorporeall Substances is to fancy his Reader a meer foole and publickly to profess that he has a minde to impose upon him 3. The third argumentation is this That which appears to us as well sleeping as wakeing is nothing without us But Ghosts that is Immateriall Substances appeare to us as well sleeping as waking This is the weakest argument that has been yet produced for both the Proposition and Assumption are false For if the Proposition were true the Sun Moon Stars Clouds Rivers Meadows Men Women and other living creatures were nothing without us For all these appeare to us as well when we are sleeping as waking But Incorporeall Substances doe not appeare to us as well sleeping as waking For the notion of an Incorporeall Substance is so subtile and refined that it leaving little or no impression on the Fancy it 's representation is meerly supported by the free power of Reason which seldome exercises it self in sleep unless upon easy imaginable Phantasmes 4. The force of the fourth Argument is briefly this Every Substance has dimensions but a Spirit has no dimensions Here I confidently deny the Assumption For it is not the Characteristicall of a Body to have dimensions but to be Impenetrable All Substance has Dimensions that is Length Breadth and Depth but all has not Impenetrability See my Letters to Monsieur Des-Cartes besides what I have here writ Cap. 2 and 3. 5. In the Excerptions belonging to the fifth place these Arguments are comprised 1. That we have no principle of knowledge of any Immateriall Being but such as a Dream or a Looking-Glasse furnisheth us withall 2. That the word Spirit or Incorporeall implyes a contradiction and cannot be conceived to be sense by a naturall Understanding 3. That nothing is conceived by the Understanding but what comes in at the Senses and therefore Spirits not acting upon the Senses must remain unknown and unconceivable We have already answered to the first in what we have returned to
or Faculty of any Essence changes it self for it is the Essence it self that exerts it self into these variations of Modes if no externall Agent is the cause of these changes And Mr. Hobbs opposing an Externall Agent to this Thing that he saies does not change it self does naturally imply That they are both not Faculties but Substances he speakes of 7. Wherefore there remains onely the latter Proposition to be examined That no Essence of it self can vary its Modification That some Essence must have had a power of moving is plain in that there is Motion in the world which must be the effect of some Substance or other But that Motion in a large sense taking it for mutation or change may proceed from that very Essence in which it is found seemes to me plain by Experience For there is an Essence in us whatever we will call it which we find endued with this property as appears from hence that it has variety of perceptions Mathematicall Logicall and I may adde also Morall that are not any impresses nor footsteps of Corporeall Motion as I have already demonstrated and any man may observe in himself and discover in the writings of others how the Minde has passed from one of these perceptions to another in very long deductions of Demonstration as also what stilness from bodily Motion is required in the excogitation of such series of Reasons where the Spirits are to run into no other posture nor motion then what they are guided into by the Mind it self where these immateriall and intellectuall Notions have the leading and rule Besides in grosser Phantasmes which are supposed to be somewhere impressed in the Brain the composition of them and disclusion and various disposall of them is plainly an arbitrarious act and implies an Essence that can as it lists excite in it self the variety of such Phantasmes as have been first exhibited to her from Externall Objects and change them and transpose them at her own will But what need I reason against this ground of Mr. Hobbs so sollicitously it being sufficient to discover that he onely saies that No Essence can change the Modifications of it self but does not prove it and therefore whatever he would infer hereupon is meerly upon a begg'd Principle 8. But however from this precarious ground he will infer that whenever we have a Will to a thing the cause of this Will is not the Will it self but something else not in our own disposing the meaning whereof must be That whenever we Will some corporeall impress which we cannot avoid forces us thereto But the Illation is as weak as bold it being built upon no foundation as I have already shewn I shall onely take notice how Mr. Hobbs though he has rescued himself from the authority of the Schools and would fain set up for himself yet he has not freed himself from their fooleries in talking of Faculties and Operations and the absurditie is alike in both as separate and distinct from the Essence they belong to wich causes a great deal of distraction and obscurity in the speculation of things I speak this in reference to those expressions of his of the Will being the cause of willing and of its being the necessary cause of voluntary actions and of things not being in its disposing Whenas if a man would speak properly and desired to be understood he would say That the Subject in which is this power or act of willing call it Man or the Soul of Man is the cause of this or that voluntary action But this would discover his Sophistry wherewith haply he has entrapt himself which is this Something out of the power of the Will necessarily causes the Will the Will once caused is the necessary cause of voluntary actions and therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated 9. Besides that the first part of this Argumentation is groundless as I have already intimated the second is sophisticall that sayes That the Will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions For by necessary may be understood either necessitated forced and made to act whether it will or no or else it may signify that the Will is a requisite cause of voluntary actions so that there can be no voluntary actions without it The latter whereof may be in some sense true but the former is utterly false So the Conclusion being inferred from assertions whereof the one is groundless the other Sophisticall the Illation cannot but be ridiculously weak and despicable But if he had spoke in the Concrete in stead of the Abstract the Sophistry had been more grossly discoverable or rather the train of his reasoning languid and contemptible Omitting therefore to speak of the Will separately which of it self is but a blind Power or Operation let us speak of that Essence which is endued with Will Sense Reason and other Faculties and see what face this argumentation of his will bear which will then run thus 10. Some externall irresistible Agent does ever necessarily cause that Essence call it Soule or what you please which is endued with the faculties of Will and Understanding â—o Will. This Essence endued with the power of exerting it self into the act of Willing is the necessary cause of Voluntary actions Therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated The first Assertion now at first sight appears a gross falshood the Soule being endued with Understanding as well as Will and therefore she is not necessarily determined to will by externall impresses but by the displaying of certain notions and perceptions she raises in her self that be purely intellectuall And the second seems a very slim and lank piece of Sophistrie Both which my reasons already alledged doe so easily and so plainly reach that I need add nothing more but pass to his second Argument the form whereof in brief is this 11. Every Cause is a sufficient cause otherwise it could not produce its effect Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause that is to say will be sure to produce the effect otherwise something was wanting thereto and it was no sufficient cause And therefore every cause is a necessary cause and consequently every Effect or Action even those that are termed Voluntary are necessitated This reasoning looks smartly at first view but if we come closer to it we shall find it a pittifull piece of Sophistry which is easily detected by observing the ambiguity of that Proposition Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause For the force lyes not so much in that it is said to be Sufficient as in that it is said to be a Cause which if it be it must of necessity have an Effect whether it be sufficient or insufficient which discovers the Sophisme For these relative terms of Cause and Effect necessarily imply one another But every Being that is sufficient to act this or that if it will and so to become the Cause thereof doth neither act nor abstain from acting necessarily And therefore if it doe act
or little Finger Besides that it seems wholly imployed in the performance of its Systole and Diastole which causes such a great difference of the situation of the Heart by turns that if it were that Seat in which the sense of all Objects center we should not be able to see things steddily resting in the same place 5. How uncapable the Brain is of being so active a Principle of Motion as we find in our selves the viscidity thereof does plainly indicate Besides that Physitians have discovered by experience that the Brain is so far from being the common Seat of all senses that it has in it none at all And the Arabians that say it has have distinguished it into such severall offices of Imagination Memory Common Sense c. that we are still at a loss for some one part of Matter that is to be the Common Percipient of all these But I have so clearly demonstrated the impossibility of the Brains being able to perform those functions that appertain truly to what ordinarily men call the Soule in my Antidote against Atheisme that it is enough to refer the Reader thither 6. As for the Membranes whether we would fancy them all the Seat of Common Sense or some one Membrane or part there of the like difficulties will accur as have been mentioned already For if all the Membranes the difference and situation of them will vary the aspect and sight of the Object so that the same things will appear to us in several hues and severall places at once as is easily demonstrated from Axiome 22. If some one Membrane or part thereof it will be impossible to excogitate any Mechanicall reason how this one particular Membrane or any part thereof can be able so strongly and determinately to move upon occasion every part of the Body 7. And therefore for this very cause cannot the Septum lucidum be the Common Percipient in us because it is utterly unimaginable how it should have the power of so stoutly and distinctly moving our exteriour parts and limbs 8. As for that new and marvelous Invention of Henricus Regius that it may be a certain perfectly solid but very small particle of Matter in the Body that is the seat of common perception besides that it is as boldly asserted that such an hard particle should have sense in it as that the filings of Iron and Steel should it cannot be the spring of Motion For how should so small at Atome move the whole Body but by moving it self But it being more subtile then the point of any needle when it puts it self upon motion especially such strong thrustings as we sometimes use it must needs passe through the Body and leave it 9. The most pure Mechanical Invention is that of the use of the Conarion proposed by Des-Cartes which considered with some other organizations of the Body bids the fairest of any thing I have met withall or ever hope to meet withall for the resolution of the Passions and Properties of living Creatures into meer corporeall motion And therefore it is requisite to insist a little upon the explication thereof that we may the more punctually confute them that would abuse his Mechanicall contrivances to the exclusion of all Principles but Corporeall in either Man or Beast CHAP. V. 1. How Perception of externall Objects Spontaneous Motion Memory and Imagination are pretended to be performed by the Conarion Spirits and Muscles without a Soule 2. That the Conarion devoid of a Soule cannot be the common Percipient demonstrated out of Des-Cartes himself 3. That the Conarion with the Spirits and organization of the Parts of the Body is not a sufficient Principle of Spontancous motion without a Soule 4. A aescription of the use of the Valvulae in the Nerves of the Muscles for spontaneous motion 5. The insufficiency of this contrivance for that purpose 6. A further demonstration of the insufficiency thereof from whence is clearly evinced that Brutes have Soules 7. That Memory cannot be salved the way above described 8. Nor Imagination 9. A Distribution out of Des-Cartes of the Functions in us some appertaining to the Body and others to the Soule 10. The Authors Observations there upon 1 THE sum of this Abuse must in brief be this That the Glandula Pinealis is the common Sentient or Percipient of all Objects and without a Soule by vertue of the Spirits and Organization of the Body may doe all those feats that we ordinarily conceive to be performed by Soule and Body joyned together For it being one whenas the rest of the Organs of Sense are double and so handsomely seated as to communicate with the Spirits as well of the posteriour as anteriour Cavities of the Brain by their help all the motions of the Nerves both those that transmit the sense of outward Objects and of inward affections of the Body such as Hunger Thirst and the like are easily conveighed unto it and so being variously moved it does variously determine the course of the Spirits into such and such Muscles whereby it moves the Body Moreover that the transmission of Motion from the Object through the Nerves into the inward concavities of the Brain and so to the Conarion opens such and such Pores of the Brain in such and such order or manner which remain as tracts or footsteps of the presence of these Objects after they are removed Which tracts or signatures consist mainly in this that the Spirits will have an easier passage through these Pores then other parts of the Brain And hence arises Memory when the Spirits be determined by the inclining of the Conarion to that part of the Brain where these tracts are found they moving then the Conarion as when the Object was present though not so strongly From the hitting of the Spirits into such like tracts is also the nature of Imagination to be explained in which there is little difference from Memory saving that the reflection upon time as past when we saw or perceived such or such a thing is quite left out But these are not all the operations we are conscious to our selves of and yet more then can be made out by this Hypothesis That Perception of Objects Spontaneous Motion Memory and Imagination may be all performed by vertue of this Glandula the Animal Spirits and meer organization of the Body as we shall plainly find though but upon an easy examination 2. For that the Conarion devoid of a Soule has no perception of any one Object is demonstrable from the very description Cartesius makes of the transmission of the image suppose through the Eye to the Brain and so to the Conarion For it is apparent from what he sets down in the 35. Article of his Treatise of the Passions of the Soule that the Image that is propagated from the Object to the Conarion is impressed thereupon in some latitude of space Whence it is manifest that the Conarion does not nor can perceive the whole Object though severall parts
from which manifestly are the supplyes of life whence the Pulse ceasing life cannot long continue for want of warmth and Spirits here is an evident reason how it may happen that a Wound about the mouth of the Stomack may dispatch a man more suddainly then a wound in the Head they being both supposed mortal though the seat of the Sensitive Soule be not chiefly in the aforesaid Orifice For partly the naturall Sympathy betwixt the Orifice of the Stomack and the Heart and partly the horrour and pain perceived by the Soule in the common Sensorium which we will suppose in the Head does so dead the Heart that as in the suddain Passions above named it ceases to perform the ordinary functions of Life and so Pulse and Sense and all is gone in short time when as the Head being wounded mortally Perception is thereby so diminished that the Heart scapes the more free from the force of that lethiferous passion and so though Sense be gone can continue the Pulse a longer time which is a perfect answer to Helmont's stories he recites in his Sedes Animae 7. To all which I may adde That himself does acknowledg in the end of that Treatise that the power of Motion of Will Memory and Imagination is in the Brain and therefore unless a man will say and deny any thing he must say that the Common Sense is there also 8. The Opinion of Mr. Hobbs bears more credit and countenance with it as having been asserted heretofore by Philosophers of great fame Epicurus Aristotle and the School of the Stoicks but if we look closer to it it will prove as little true as the other especially in his way that holds there is no Soule in a Man but that all is but organized Matter For let him declare any Mechanicall reason whereby his Heart will be able to move his Finger But upon this Hypothesis I have confuted this Opinion already It is more maintainable if there be granted a Soule in the Body that the Heart is the chief Seat thereof and place of Common Sense as Aristotle and others would have it as also the spring of Spontaneous Motion But it is very unlikely that that part that is so continually employed in that naturall Motion of contracting and dilating it self should be the Seat of that Principle which commands Free and Spontaneous progressions Perceptions also would be horribly disturbed by its squeezing of it self and then flagging again by vicissitudes Neither would Objects appear in the same place when the Heart is drawn up and when it is let down again as I have above intimated the extream heat also of it could not admit that it be affected with the gentle motions of the Objects of Sense the Blood being there in a manner scalding hot And it is in this sense that that Aphorisme in Aristotle is to be understood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which must receive the variety of externall impresses must not be it self in any high temper or agitation 9. Wherefore it is a very rash thing to assert that the Heart is the Seat of Common Sense unless by some plain experience it could be evinced to be so whenas indeed Experiments are recorded to the contrary As that if we bind a Nerve Sense and Motion will be betwixt the Ligature and the Brain but not betwixt the Heart and the Ligature And that the Crocodile his Heart being cut cut will live for a considerable time and fight and defend himself The like is observed of the Sea-Tortoise and the wild Goat as Calcidius writes To which you may adde what Galen relates of sacrificed Beasts that their Hearts being taken out and laid upon the Altar they have been seen in the mean time not onely to breath and roar aloud but also to run away till the expence of Blood has made them fall down Which Narrations to me are more credible I having seen with mine own eyes a Frog quite exenterated heart stomack guts and all taken out by an ingenious friend of mine and dexterous Anatomist after which the Frog could see and would avoid any object in its way and skipped as freely and nimbly up and down as when it was entire and that for a great while But a very little wound in the Head deprives them immediatly of Life and Motion Whence it is plain that the derivation of Sense and spontaneous Motion is not from the Heart For if the Motion be intercepted betwixt the Brain and the Heart by Mr. Hobbs his own concession there will be no perception of the Object And there is the same reason of the Orifice of the Stomack so that this one Experiment does clearly evince these two Opinions to be erroneous 10. And that no man hereafter may make any other unhappy choice in the parts of the Body we shall now propose such Reasons as we hope will plainly prove That the common Sensorium must needs be in the Head or indeed rather repeat them For some of those whereby we proved that the Heart is not the Seat of Common Sense will plainly evince that the Head is As that out of Laurentius that a Nerve being tied Sense and Motion will be preserved from the ligature up towards the Head but downwards they will be lost As also that experiment of a Frog whose brain if you pierce will presently be devoid of Sense and Motion though all the Entrals being taken out it will skip up and down and exercise its senses as before Which is a plain evidence that Motion and Sense is derived from the Head and there is now no pretence to trace any Motion into a farther fountain the Heart from whence the Nerves were conceived to branch by Aristotle and from whence certainly the Veins and Arteries doe as appears by every Anatomie being so justly discharged from that office To which it may suffice to adde the consideration of those diseases that seize upon all the Animal functions at once such as are the Lethargie Apoplexie Epilepsie and the like the causes of which Physicians find in the Head and accordingly apply remedies Which is a plain detection that the Seat of the Soule as much as concerns the Animal Faculties is chiefly in the Head The same may be said of Phrensy and Melancholy and such like distempers that deprave a mans Imagination and Judgment Physitians alwaies conclude something amiss within the Cranium Lastly if it were nothing but the near attendance of the outward Senses on the Soule or her discerning Faculty being so fitly placed about her in the Head this unless there were some considerable Argument to the contrary should be sufficient to determine any one that is unprejudiced to conclude that the Seat of Common Sense Understanding and command of Motion is there also 11. But now the greatest difficulty will be to define In what part thereof it is to be placed In which unless we will goe over-boldly and carelesly to work we are to have a regard to
from what has been alledged That the Common Sensorium is to be placed in the midst of these purer Spirits of the fourth Ventricle of the Brain CHAP. X. 1. That the Soule is not confined to the Common Sensorium 2. The first Argument from the Plastick power of the Soule 3. Which is confirmed from the graduall dignity of the Soules Faculties of which this Plastick is the lowest 4. Externall Sensation the next 5. After that Imagination and then Reason 6. The second Argument from Passions and Sympathies in Animals 7. An illustration of the manner of naturall Magick 8. The third Argument from the Perception of Pain in the exteriour parts of the Body 9. The fourth and last from the nature of Sight 1. WE are now at leisure to resume the two remaining Enquiries the former whereof is whether the Soule be so in this fourth Ventricle that it is essentially no where else in the Body or whether it be spread out into all the Members Regius would coup it up in the Conarion which he believes to be the Common Sensorium and so by consequence it should be confined to the fourth Ventricle and not expatiate at all thence supposing that the Seat of Common Sense The reason of this conceit of his is this That whatever is in the rest of the Body may come to pass by powers meerly Mechanical wherein he does very superstitiously tread in the footsteps of his Master Des-Cartes But for my own part I cannot but dissent I finding in neither any sufficient grounds of so novell an Opinion but rather apparent reasons to the contrary 2. As first the Frame of the Body of which I think most reasonable to conclude the Soule her self to be the more particular Architect for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion and that the Plastick power resides in her as also in the Soules of Brute animals as very learned and worthy Writers have determined That the Fabrick of the Body is out of the concurse of Atomes is a meer precarious Opinion without any ground or reason For Sense does not discover any such thing the first rudiments of life being out of some liquid homogeneall Matter and it is against reason that the tumbling of Atomes or corporeall particles should produce such exquisite frames of creatures wherein the acutest wit is not able to find any thing inept but all done exquisitely wel everywhere where the foulness and courseness of Matter has not been in fault That God is not the immediate Maker of these Bodyes the particular miscarriages demonstrate For there is no Matter so perverse and stubborn but his Omnipotency could tame whence there would be no Defects nor Monstrosities in the generation of Animals Nor is it so congruous to admit that the Plastick faculty of the Soul of the World is the sole contriver of these Fabricks of particular creatures though I will not deny but she may give some rude preparative stroaks towards Efformation but that in every particular world such as Man is especially his own Soule is the peculiar and most perfective Architect thereof as the Soule of the World is of it For this vitall Fabrication is not as in artificiall Architecture when an external person acts upon Matter but implies a more particular and near union with that Matter it thus intrinsecally shapes out and organizes And what ought to have a more particular and close union with our Bodies then our Souls themselves My opinion is therefore That the Soule which is a Spirit and therefore contractible and dilatable begins within less compass at first in Organizing the fitly-prepared Matter and so bears it self on in the same tenour of work till the Body has attained its full growth and that the Soule dilates it self in the dilating of the Body and so possesses it through all the members thereof 3. The congruity of this Truth will further discover it self if we consider the nature of the faculties of the Soule of which you may read more fully in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus Artic. 3 4 5. in what a natural graduality they arise till they come to the most free of all The deepest or lowest is this Plastick power we have already spoke of in virtue whereof is continued that perpetuall Systole and Diastole of the Heart as I am more prone to think then that it is meerly Mechanical as also that Respiration that is performed without the command of our Will For the Libration or Reciprocation of the Spirits in the Tensility of the Muscles would not be so perpetuall but cease in a small time did not some more mysticall Principle then what is meerly Mechanical give Assistance as any one may understand by observing the insufficiency of those devices that Henricus Regius propounds for adaequate causes of such motions in the Body These I look upon as the First Faculties of the Soule which may be bounded by this generall character That the exercise of them does not at all imply so much as our Perception 4. Next to these is the Sensation of any externall Object such as Hearing Seeing Feeling c. All which include Perception in an unresistible necessity thereof the Object being present before us and no externall Obstacle interposing 5. Imagination is more free we being able to avoid its representations for the most part without any externall help but it is a degree on this side Will and Reason by which we correct and silence unallowable fancies Thus we see how the Faculties of the Soule rise by Degrees which makes it still the more easy and credible that the lowest of all is competible to her as well as the highest 6. Moreover Passions and Sympathies in my judgment are more easily to be resolved into this Hypothesis of the Souls pervading the whole Body then in restraining its essentiall presence to one part thereof For to believe that such an horrible Object as suppose a Bear or Tiger by transmission of Motion from it through the eyes of an Animal to the Conarion shall so reflect thence as to determine the Spirits into such Nerves as will streighten the Orifice of the Heart and lessen the Pulse and cause all other symptomes of Fear seems to me little better then a meer piece of Mechanical Credulity Those Motions that represent the Species of things being turned this way or the other way without any such impetus of Matter as should doe such feats as Des-Cartes speaks of in his Book of Passions And that which he would give us as a pledg of this Truth is so false that it does the more animate me to dis-believe the Theorem Artic. 13. For the wafting of one's hand neare the Eye of a mans friend is no sufficient proof That externall Objects will necessarily and Mechanically determine the Spirits into the Muscles no Faculty of the Soule intermedling For if one be fully assured or rather can keep himself from the fear of any hurt by the wafting of his friends Hand before his Eye he
creatures that are less perfect may be usually Mechanicall 9. We have now so far forth as it is requisite for our design considered the Nature and Functions of the Soule and have plainly demonstrated that she is a Substance distinct from the Body and that her very Essence is spread throughout all the Organs thereof as also that the generall instrument of all her Operations is the subtile Spirits which though they be not in like quantity and sincerity every where yet they make all the Body so pervious to the impresses of Objects upon the externall Organs that like Lightning they pass to the Common Sensorium For it is not necessary that the Medium be so fine and tenuious as the Matter where the most subtile motion begins Whence Light passes both Aire and Water though Aire alone is not sufficient for such a motion as Light and Water almost uncapable of being the Seat of the fountain thereof This may serve to illustrate the passage of Sense from the Membranes or in what other seat soever the Spirits are most subtil and lucid through thicker places of the Body to the very Centre of Perception 10. Lastly we have discovered a kind of Heterogeneity in the Soule and that she is not of the same power every where For her Centre of Perception is confined to the Fourth Ventricle of the Brain and if the Sensiferous Motions we speak of be not faithfully conducted thither we have no knowledg of the Object That part therefore of the Soule is to be looked upon as most precious and she not being an independent Mass as Matter is but one part resulting from another that which is the noblest is in all reason to be deemed the cause of the rest For which reason as Synesius calls God on whom all things depend 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so I think this Part may be called the Root of the Soule Which apprehension of ours will seem the less strange if we consider that from the highest Life viz. the Deity there does result that which has no Life nor Sense at all to wit the stupid Matter Wherefore in very good Analogie we may admit that that pretious part of the Soule in which resides Perception Sense and Understanding may send forth such an Essential Emanation from it self as is utterly devoid of all Sense and Perception which you may call if you will the Exteriour branches of the Soule or the Rayes of the Soule if you call that nobler and diviner part the Centre which may very well merit also the appellation of the Eye of the Soule all the rest of its parts being but meer darkness without it In which like another Cyclops it will resemble the World we live in whose one Eye is conspicuous to all that behold the light 11. But to leave such lusorious Considerations that rather gratifie our fancy then satisfy our severer faculties we shall content our selves hereafter from those two notorious Powers and so perfectly different which Philosophers acknowledg in the Soule to wit Perception and Organization onely to term that more noble part of her in the Common Sensorium the Perceptive and all the rest the Plastick part of the Soule CHAP. XII 1. An Answer to an Objection That our Arguments will as well prove the Immortality of the Souls of Brutes as of Men. 2. Another Objection inferring the Praeexistence of Brutes Souls and consequently of ours 3. The first Answer to the Objection 4. The second Answer consisting of four parts 5. First That the Hypothesis of Praeexistence is more agreeable to Reason then any other Hypothesis 6. And not onely so but that it is very solid in it self 7. That the Wisdome and Goodness of God argue the truth thereof 8. As also the face of Providence in the World 9. The second part of the second Answer That the Praeexistence of the Soul has the suffrage of all Philosophers in all Ages that held it Incorporeal 10. That the Gymnosophists of AEgypt the Indian Brachmans the Persian Magi and all the learned of the Jews were of this Opinion 11. A Catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same 12. That Aristotle was also of the same minde 13. Another more clear place in Aristotle to this purpose with Sennertus his Interpretation 14. An Answer to an evasion of that Interpretation 15. The last and clearest place of all out of Aristotles Writings 1. HAving thus discovered the Nature of the Soul and that she is a Substance distinct from the Body I should be in readiness to treat of her Separation from it did I not think my self obliged first to answer an envious Objection cast in our way whereby they would make us believe that the Arguments which we have used though they be no less then Demonstrations are meer Sophisms because some of them and those of not the least validity prove what is very absurd and false viz. That the Souls of Brutes also are Substances Incorporeal distinct from the Body from whence it will follow that they are Immortal But to this I have answered already in the Appendix to my Antidote c. Cap. 10. and in brief concluded That they are properly no more Immortal then the stupid Matter which never perishes and that out of a terrestrial Body they may have no more sense then it For all these things are as it pleases the first Creatour of them 2. To this they perversly reply That if the Souls of Brutes subsist after death and are then sensless and unactive it will necessarily follow that they must come into Bodies again For it is very ridiculous to think that these Souls having a Being yet in the world and wanting nothing but fitly-prepared Matter to put them in a capacity of living again should be always neglected and never brought into play but that new ones should be daily created in their stead for those innumerable Myriads of Souls would lie useless in the Universe the number still increasing even to infinity But if they come into Bodies again it is evident that they praeexist and if the Souls of Brutes praeexist then certainly the Souls of Men doe so too Which is an Opinion so wilde and extravagant that a wry mouth and a loud laughter the Argument that every Fool is able to use is sufficient to silence it and dash it out of countenance No wise man can ever harbour such a conceit as this which every Idiot is able to confute by consulting but with his own Memory For he is sure if he had been before he could remember something of that life past Besides the unconceivableness of the Approach and Entrance of these praeexistent Souls into the Matter that they are to actuate 3. To this may be answered two things The first That though indeed it cannot be well denied but that the concession of the Praeexistence of the Souls of Brutes is a very fair introduction to the belief of the Praeexistence of the Souls of Men also yet the sequel is
very question of the Praeexistency of Soules of the Sensitive and Rationall especially 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether both kindes doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is praeexist before they come into the Body or whether the Rationall onely and he concludes thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. It remains that the rationall or intellectual Soule onely enter from without as being onely of a nature purely divine with whose actions the actions of this gross Body have no communication Concerning which point he concludes like an Orthodox Scholar of his excellent Master Plato to whose footsteps the closer he keeps the less he ever wanders from the truth For in this very place he does plainly profess what many would not have him so apertly guilty of that the Soule of man is immortall and can perform her proper Functions without the help of this terrestriall Body And thus I think I have made good the two first parts of my answer to the proposed Objection and have clearly proved that the Praeexistence of the Soule is an opinion both in it self the most rationall that can be maintained and has had the suffrage of the renownedst Philosophers in all Ages of the World and that therefore this sequel from our arguments for the Immortality of the Soule is no discovery of any fallacy in them CHAP. XIII 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Soules Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossble for the Soule to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soule into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 1. AS for the two last Difficulties concerning the Soules Memory of her former state and the manner of her coming into the Body I hope I shall with as much ease extricate my self here also especially in the former For if we consider what things they are that either quite take away or exceedingly diminish our Memory in this life we shall find the concurse of them all and that in a higher degree or from stronger causes contained in our descent into this earthly Body then we can meet with here they none of them being so violent as to dislodge us out of it 2. Now the things that take away our Memory here are chiefly these either the want of opportunity of being reminded of a thing as it happens with many who rise confident they slept without dreaming such a night and yet before they goe to bed again recover a whole Series of representations they had in their last sleep by something that sell out in the day without which it had been impossible for them to recall to minde their Dream Or else in the second place Desuetude of thinking of a Matter whereby it comes to pass that what we have earnestly meditated laboured for and pen'd down with our own hands when we were at Schoole were it not that we saw our names written under the Exercise we could not acknowledg for ours when we are grown men Or lastly some considerable change in the frame and temper of our Body whether from some externall mischance or from some violent Disease or else from old age which is disease enough of it self which often doe exceedingly impaire if not quite take away the Memory though the Soule be still in the same Body 3. Now all these Principles of Forgetfulness namely the want of something to reminde us Desuetude of thinking and an Extraordinary change in the Body are more eminently to be found in the Descent of the Soule into these Earthly prisons then can happen to her for any time of her abode therein For there is a greater difference in all probability betwixt that Scene of things the Soule sees out of the Body and in it then betwixt what shee sees sleeping and waking and the perpetuall occursions of this present life continue a long Desuetude of thinking on the former Besides that their descent hither in all likelihood scarce befalls them but in their state of Silence and Inactivity in which myriads of Soules may haply be for many Ages as the maintainers of this Opinion may pretend by reason of the innumerable expirations of the aëreal periods of life and the more narrow Lawes of preparing terrestrial Matter And lastly her coming into this Earthly Body is a greater and more disadvantageous change for the utter spoiling of the memory of things she was acquainted with before then any Mischance or Disease can be for the bringing upon her a forgetfulness of what she has known in this life 4. And yet that Diseases and Casualties have even utterly taken away all memory is amply recorded in History As that Messala Corvinus forgot his own name that one by a blow with a stone forgot all his learning another by a fall from an Horse the name of his Mother and kinsfolks A young Student of Montpelier by a wound lost his Memory so that he was fain to be taught the letters of the Alphabet again The like befell a Franciscan after a Feaver And Thucydides writes of some who after their recovery from that great Pestilence at Athens did not onely forget the names and persons of their friends but themselves too not knowing who themselves were nor by what name they were called Atque etiam quosdam cepisse oblivia rerum Cunctarum neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi as the Poet Lucretius sadly sets down in his description of that devouring Plague out of the fore-named Historian 5. Wherefore without a miracle it is impossible the Soule should remember any particular circumstance of her former condition though she did really praeexist and was in a capacity of acting before she came into this Body as Aristotle plainly acknowledges she was her change being far greater by coming into the Body then can ever be made while she staies in it Which we haply shall be yet more assured of after we have considered the manner of her descent which is the last Difficulty objected 6. I might easily decline this Controversie by pleading onely that the entrance of the Soule into the Body supposing her Praeexistence is as intelligible as in those other two wayes of Creation and Traduction For how this newly-created Soule is infused by God no man knowes nor how if it be traducted from the Parents both their Soules contribute to the making up a new one For if there be decision of part of the Soule of the Male in the injection of his seed into the matrix of the Female and part of the Female Soule to joyn with that of the Males besides that the decision of these parts of their
tenuious and thin is most passive and therefore if it be once the Vehicle of Sense is most sensible Whence it will follow that the reflexion of Light from Objects being able to move our Organs that are not so fine they will more necessarily move those of the Genii and at a greater distance But their Bodies being of diaphanous Aire it is impossible for us to see them unless they will give themselves the trouble of reducing them to a more terrestrial consistency whereby they may reflect light Nor can we easily hear their ordinary speech partly because a very gentle motion of the Aire will act upon their Vehicles and partly because they may haply use the finer and purer part of that Element in this exercise which is not so fit to move our Sense And therefore unless they will be heard datâ operâ naturally that impress of the Aire in their usual discourse can never strike our Organ 5. And that we may not seem to say all this for nought that they will have Hearing as well as Seeing appears from what I have intimated above that this Faculty is ranged near the Common Sensorium in the Vehicle as well as that of Sight and therefore the Vehicle being all Aire such percussions of it as cause the sense of Sound in us will necessarily doe the like in them but more accurately haply if they organize their Vehicle for the purpose which will answer to the arrection of the Ears of Animals for the better taking in the Sound 6. That they have the sense of Touch is inevitably true else how could they feel resistance which is necessary in the bearing of one Body against another because they are impenetrable And to speak freely my mind it will be a very hard thing to disprove that they have not something analogical to Smell and Tast which are very near a-kin to Touch properly so called For Fumes and Odours passing so easily through the Aire will very naturally insinuate into their Vehicles also which Fumes if they be grosser and humectant may raise that diversification of Touch which we Mortals call Tasting if more subtile and dry that which we call Smelling Which if we should admit we are within modest bounds as yet in comparison of others as Cardan who affirms downright that the AErial Genii are nourished and that some of them get into the Bodies of Animals to batten themselves there in their Blood and Spirits Which is also averred by Marcus the Mesopotamian Eremite in Psellus who tells us that the purer sort of the Genii are nourished by drawing in the Aire as our Spirits are in the Nerves and Arteries and that other Genii of a courser kinde suck in moisture not with the Mouth as we doe but as a Sponge does water And Moses AEgyptius writes concerning the Zabii that they eat of the blood of their Sacrifice because they thought it was the food of the Daemons they worshipped and that by eating thereof they were in a better capacity to communicate with them Which things if they could be believed that would be no such hard Probleme concerning the Familiars of Witches why they suck them But such curiosities being not much to our purpose I willingly omit 7. The conclusion of what has been said is this That it is certain that the Genii and consequently the Souls of men departed who ipso facto are of the same rank with them have the sense of Seeing Hearing and Touching and not improbably of Smelling and Tasting Which Faculties being granted they need not be much at a loss how to spend their time though it were but upon external Objects all the furniture of Heaven and Earth being fairly exposed to their view They see the same Sun and Moon that we doe behold the persons and converse of all men and if no special Law inhibit them may pass from Town to Town and from City to City as Hesiod also intimates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is nothing that we enjoy but they may have their fees out of it fair Fields large and invious Woods pleasant Gardens high and healthful Mountains where the purest gusts of Aire are to be met with Crystal Rivers mossy Springs solemnity of Entertainments Theatrick Pomps and Shews publick and private Discourses the exercises of Religion whether in Temples Families or hidden Cells They may be also and haply not uninteressed Spectators of the glorious and mischievous hazards of War whether Sea-fights or Land-fights besides those soft and silent though sometimes no less dangerous Combats in the Camps of Cupid and a thousand more particularities that it would be too long to reckon up where they haply are not men Spectators but Abettors as Plutarch writes Like old men that are past Wrestling Pitching the Barre or playing at Cudgels themselves yet will assist and abet the young men of the Parish at those Exercises So the Souls of men departed though they have put off with the Body the capacity of the ordinary functions of humane Life yet they may assist and abet them as pursuing some design in them and that either for evil or good according as they were affected themselves when they were in the Body 8. In brief whatever is the custome and desire of the Soul in this life that sticks and adheres to her in that which is to come and she will be sure so farre as she is capable either to act it or to be at least a Spectator and Abettor of such kinde of actions Quae gratia currûm Armorumque fuit vivis quae cura nitentes Pascere equos eadē sequitur tellure repostos Which rightly understood is no poetical fiction but a professed Truth in Plato's Philosophy And Maximus Tyrius speaks expresly even of the better sort of Soules who having left the Body and so becoming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. being made ipso facto Genii in stead of men that beside the peculiar happiness they reap thereby to themselves they are appointed by God and have a mission from him to be Overseers of humane affairs but that every Genius does not perform every office but as their naturall Inclinations and Customes were in this life they exercise the like in some manner in the other And therefore he will have AEsculapius to practise Physick still and Hercules to exercise his strength Amphilochus to prophesy Castor and Pollux to navigate Minos to hear causes and Achilles to war Which opinion is as likely to hold true in Bad Souls as in Good and then it will follow that the Souls of the wicked make it their business to assist and abet the exercise of such Vices as themselves were most addicted to in this life and to animate and tempt men to them From whence it would follow that they being thus by their separate state Daemons as has been said already if they be also tempters to evil they will very little differ from meer Devils 9. But besides this employment in reference to us they
confined onely to our furtherance of what is of the highest and most indispensable consideration here but in proportion touches all transactions that proceed from a vertuous and good principle whereof there are several degrees amongst which those may not be esteemed the meanest that refer to a National good And therefore those that out of a natural generosity of Spirit and successful fortitude in Warre have delivered their Country from bondage or have been so wise and understanding in Politicks as to have contrived wholsome Laws for the greater happiness and comfort of the People while such a Nation prospers and is in being it cannot but be an accrument of happiness to these so considerable Benefactors unless we should imagine them less generous and good in the other World where they have the advantage of being Better And what I have said in this more notable instance is in a degree true in things of smaller concernment which would be infinite to rehearse But whole Nations with their Laws and Orders of Men and Families may fail and therefore these accessions be cut off but he that laies out his pains in this life for the carrying on such designs as will take place so long as the World endures and must have a compleat Triumph at last such a one laies a train for an everlasting advantage in the other World which in despite of all the tumblings and turnings of unsetled fortune will be sure to take effect 11. But this matter requires Judgement as well as Heat and Forwardness For pragmatical Ignorance though accompanied with some measure of Sincerity and well-meaning may set a-foot such things in the World or set upon record such either false or impertinent and unseasonable Principles as being made ill use of may very much prejudice the Cause one desires to promote which will be a sad spectacle for them in the other State For though their simplicity may be pardonable yet they will not fail to finde the ill effect of their mistake upon themselves As he that kills a friend in stead of an enemy though he may satisfy his Conscience that rightly pleads his innocency yet he cannot avoid the sense of shame and sorrow that naturally follows so mischievous an error 12. Such accruencies as these there may be to our enjoyments in the other World from the durable traces of our transactions in this if we have any Memory of things after Death as I have already demonstrated that we have But if we had not but Aristotles and Cardan's Opinion were true yet Vertue and Piety will not prove onely useful for this present state Because according to our living here we shall hereafter by a hidden concatenation of Causes be drawn to a condition answerable to the purity or impurity of our Souls in this life that silent Nemesis that passes through the whole contexture of the Universe ever fatally contriving us into such a state as we our selves have fitted our selves for by our accustomary actions Of so great consequence is it while we have opportunity to aspire to the best things CHAP. XII 1. What the Spirit of Nature is 2. Experiments that argue its real Existence such as that of two strings tuned Unisons 3. Sympathetick Cures and Tortures 4. The Sympathy betwixt the Earthly and Astral Body 5. Monstrous Births 6. The Attraction of the Loadstone and Roundness of the Sun and Stars 1. WE had now quite finished our Discourse did I not think it convenient to answer a double expectation of the Reader The one is touching the Spirit of Nature the other the producing of Objections that may be made against our concluded Assention of the Souls Immortality For as for the former I can easily imagine he may well desire a more punctual account of that Principle I have had so often recourse to then I have hitherto given and will think it fit that I should somewhere more fully explain what I mean by the terms and shew him my strongest grounds why I conceive there is any such Being in the World To hold him therefore no longer in suspence I shall doe both in this place The Spirit of Nature therefore according to that notion I have of it is A substance incorporeal but without Sense and Animadversion pervading the whole Matter of the Universe and exercising a plastical power therein according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon raising such Phaenomena in the World by directing the parts of the Matter and their Motion as cannot be resolved into meer Mechanical powers This rude Description may serve to convey to any one a conception determinate enough of the nature of the thing And that it is not a meer Notion but a real Being besides what I have occasionally hinted already and shall here again confirm by new instances there are several other considerations may perswade us 2. The first whereof shall be concerning those experiments of Sympathetick Pains Asswagements and Cures of which there are many Examples approved by the most scrupulous Pretenders to sobriety and judgment and of all which I cannot forbear to pronounce that I suspect them to come to pass by some such power as makes strings that be tuned Unisons though on several Instruments the one being touched the other to tremble and move very sensibly and to cast off a straw or pin or any such small thing laid upon it Which cannot be resolved into any Mechanical Principle though some have ingeniously gone about it For before they attempted to shew the reason why that string that is not Unison to that which is struck should not leap and move as it doth that is they should have demonstrated that by the meer Vibration of the Aire that which is Unison can be so moved for if it could these Vibrations would not fail to move other Bodies more movable by farre then the string it self that is thus moved As for example if one hung loose near the string that is struck a small thred of silk or an hair with some light thing at the end of it they must needs receive those reciprocal Vibrations that are communicated to the Unison string at a far greater distance if the meer motion of the material Aire caused the subsultation of the string tuned Unison Which yet is contrary to experience Besides that if it were the meer Vibration of the Aire that caused this tremor in the Unison string the effect would not be considerable unless both the strings lay well-nigh in the same Plane and that the Vibration of the string that is struck be made in that Plane they both lie in But let the string be struck so as to cut the Plane perpendicularly by its tremulous excursions or let both the strings be in two several Planes at a good distance above one another the event is much-what the same though the Aire cannot rationally be conceived to vibrate backwards and forwards but well-nigh in the very Planes wherein the strings are moved All
which things do clearly shew that pure corporeal causes cannot produce this effect and that therefore we must suppose that both the strings are united with some one incorporeal Being which has a different Unity and Activity from Matter but yet a Sympathy therewith which affecting this immaterial Being makes it affect the Matter in the same manner in another place where it does symbolize with that other in some predisposition or qualification as these two strings doe in being tuned Unisons to one another and this without sending any particles to the Matter it does thus act upon as my thought of moving of my Toe being represented within my Brain by the power of my Soul I can without sending Spirits into my Toe but onely by making use of them that are there move my Toe as I please by reason of that Unity and Activity that is peculiar to my Soul as a spiritual substance that pervades my whole Body Whence I would conclude also that there is some such Principle as we call the Spirit of Nature or the Inferiour Soul of the World into which such Phaenomena as these are to be resolved 3. And I account Sympathetick Cures Pains and Asswagements to be such As for example when in the use of those Magnetick Remedies as some call them they can make the wound dolorously hot or chill at a great distance or can put it into perfect case this is not by any agency of emissary Atoms For these hot Atoms would cool sufficiently in their progress to the party through the frigid aire and the cold Atoms if they could be so active as to dispatch so far would be warm enough by their journey in the Summer Sun The inflammations also of the Cowes Udder by the boyling over of the milk into the fire the scalding of mens entrails at a distance by the burning of their excrements with other pranks of the like nature these cannot be rationally resolved into the recourse of the Spirits of Men or Kine mingled with fiery Atoms and so re-entring the parts thus affected because the minuteness of those toms argues the suddainness of their extinction as the smallest wires made red hot soonest cool To all which you may adde that notable example of the Wines working when the Vines are in the flower and that this sympathetick effect must be from the Vines of that country from which they came whence these exhalations of the Vineyards must spread as far as from Spain and the Canaries to England and by the same reason must reach round about every way as far from the Canaries besides their journey upwards into the Aire So that there will be an Hemisphere of vineall Atoms of an incredible extent unless they part themselves into trains and march onely to those places whither their Wines are carried But what corporeal cause can guide them thither Which question may be made of other Phaenomena of the like nature Whence again it will be necessary to establish the Principle I drive at though the effects were caused by the transmission of Atoms 4. The notablest examples of this Mundane Sympathy are in histories more uncertain and obscure and such as though I have been very credibly informed yet as I have already declared my self I dare onely avouch as possible viz. the Souls of men leaving their Bodies and appearing in shapes suppose of Cats Pigeons Wezels and sometimes of Men and that whatever hurt befalls them in these Astral bodies as the Paracelsians love to call them the same is inflicted upon their Terrestrial lying in the mean time in their beds or on the ground As if their Astral bodies be scalded wounded have the back broke the same certainly happens to their Earthly bodies Which things if they be true in all likelihood they are to be resolved into this Principle we speak of and that the Spirit of Nature is snatcht into consent with the imagination of the Soules in these Astral bodies or aiery Vehicles Which act of imagining must needs be strong in them it being so set on and assisted by a quick and sharp pain and fright in these scaldings woundings and stroaks on the back some such thing happening here as in women with child whose Fancies made keen by a suddain fear have deprived their children of their arms yea and of their heads too as also appears by two remarkable stories Sr. Kenelme Digby relates in his witty and eloquent Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by the powder of Sympathy besides what we have already recited out of Helmont See Lib. 2. Cap. 15. Sect. 8 9 10. 5. Which effects I suppose to be beyond the power of any humane Fancy unassisted by some more forceable Agent as also that prodigious birth he mentions of a woman of Carcassona who by her overmuch sporting and pleasing her self with an Ape while she was with Child brought forth a Monster exactly of that shape And if we should conclude with that learned Writer that it was a real Ape it is no more wonderfull nor so much as that birth of a Crabfish or Lobster we have above mentioned out of Fortunius Licetus as we might also other more usual though no less monstrous births for the wombs of women to bear Of which the Soul of the Mother cannot be suspected to be the cause she not so much as being the efformer of her own Foetus as that judicious Naturalist Dr. Harvey has determined And if the Mothers Soule could be the efformer of the Foetus in all reason her Plastick power would be ever particular and specifick as the Soul it self is particular What remains therefore but the universal Soule of the World or Spirit of Nature that can doe these feats who Vertumnus like is ready to change his own Activity and the yielding matter into any mode and shape indifferently as occasion engages him and so to prepare an edifice at least the more rude stroaks and delineaments thereof for any specifick Soule whatsoever and in any place where the Matter will yield to his operations But the time of the arrival thither of the particular guest it is intended for though we cannot say how soon it is yet we may be sure it is not later then a clear discovery of Sensation as well as Vegetation and organization in the Matter 6. The Attraction of the Load-stone seems to have some affinity with these instances of Sympathy This mystery Des-Cartes has explained with admirable artifice as to the immediate corporeal causes thereof to wit those wreathed particles which he makes to pass certain screw-pores in the Load-stone and Iron But how the efformation of these particles is above the reach of the meer mechanical powers in Matter as also the exquisite direction of their motion whereby they make their peculiar Vortex he describes about the Earth from Pole to Pole and thread an incrustated Star passing in a right line in so long a journey as the Diameter thereof without being swung to the sides how these
are highly and Heroically vertuous but that in process of time they may arrive to an everlasting security of Life and Happiness after they have left this earthly Body CHAP. XVIII 1. The Conflagration of the World an Opinion of the Stoicks 2. Two ways of destroying the World the Ancients have taken notice of especially that by Fire 3. That the Conflagration of the World so far as it respects us is to be understood onely of the burning of the Earth 4. That the ends of the Stoicks Conflagration is competible onely to the Earths burning 5. An acknowledgement that the Earth may be burnt though the proof thereof be impertinent to this place 6. That the Conflagration thereof will prove very fatal to the Souls of Wicked men and Daemons 7. Five several Opinions concerning their state after the Conflagration whereof the first is That they are quite destroy'd by Fire 8. The second That they are annihilated by a special act of Omnipotency 9. The third That they lye sensless in an eternal Death 10. The fourth That they are in a perpetual furious and painful Dream 11. The fifth and last That they will revive again and that the Earth and Aire will be inhabited by them 12. That this last seems to be fram'd from the fictitious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Stoicks who were very sorry Metaphysicians and as ill Naturallists 13. An Animadversion upon a self-contradicting sentence of Seneca 14. The unintelligibleness of the state of the Souls of the Wicked after the Conflagration 15. That the AEthereal Inhabitants will be safe And what will then become of Good men and Daemons on the Earth and in the Aire And how they cannot be delivered but by a supernatural power 1. AS for the External impediments we shall now examine them and see of what force they will be and whether they be at all The former of which is the Conflagration of the World Which is an ancient Opinion believed and entertain'd not onely by Religious but by Philosophers also the Stoicks especially who affirm that the Souls of Men doe subsist indeed after Death but cannot continue any longer in being then to the Conflagration of the World But it is not so much material what they thought as to consider what is the condition indeed of the Souls of Men and Daemons after that sad Fate 2. Those that will not have the World eternal have found out two ways to destroy it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Water or by Fire Which they say does as naturally happen in a vast Period of Time which they call Annus magnus as Winter and Summer doe in our ordinary year Inundatio non secus quam Hyems quam AEstas lege Mundi venit But for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it not being so famous nor so frequently spoken of nor so destructive nor so likely to end the World as the other way nor belonging so properly to our enquiry we shall let it pass The general Prognostick is concerning Fire now not onely of the Stoicks as Zeno Cleanthes Chrysippus Seneca but of several also of different Sects as Heraclitus Epicurus Cicero Pliny Aristocles Numenius and sundry others 3. But though there be so great and unanimous consent that the World shall be burnt yet they doe not express themselves all alike in the business Seneca's vote is the most madly explicite of any making the very Stars run and dash one against another and so set all on fire But Posidonius and Panaetius had more wit who did not hold that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the other Stoicks did For the destroying of the AEthereal Regions by Fire is as foolish a fancy as the sentencing of the Eele to be drown'd because the matter of the AEther is too fine and subtile for Fire to rage in it being indeed nothing but a pure light or fire it self And yet this AEthereal Matter is infinitely the greatest portion of the World Wherefore the World cannot be said properly to be lyable to the destruction of Fire from any natural causes as the Stoicks would have it Which is demonstratively true upon Des-Cartes his Principles who makes Fire nothing but the motion of certain little particles of Matter and holds that there is no more motion at one time in the World then at another because one part of the Matter cannot impress any agitation upon another but it must lose so much it self This hideous noise therefore of the Conflagration of the World must be restrain'd to the firing of the Earth onely so farre as it concerns us For there is nothing else combustible in the Universe but the Earth and other Planets and what Vapours and Exhalations arise from them 4. This Conflagration therefore that Philosophers Poets Sibyls and all have fill'd the World with the fame of is nothing but the burning of the Earth And the ends the Stoicks pretend of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be competible to it but not to the burning of the Heavens or AEther at all as any but meanly skilled in Philosophy cannot but acknowledge For their nature is so simple that they cannot corrupt and therefore want no renovation as the Earth does Nor do the Inhabitants of those heavenly Regions defile themselves with any vice or if they doe they sink from their material station as well as moral and fall towards these terrestrial dreggs And therefore that part of the happy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seneca speaks of Omne animal ex integro generabitur dabitúrque terris homo inscius scelerum melioribus auspiciis natus will take no place with those AEthereal Creatures 5. We are willing then to be born down by this common and loud cry of Fire that must burn the World into an acknowledgement that the Earth may within a certain Period of time be burnt with all those things that are upon it or near it But what concurse of natural causes may contribute to this dismal spectacle is not proper for me to dispute especially in this place I shall onely take a view of what sad effects this Conflagration may have upon the Souls of Daemons and Men. For that those those that have recovered their AEthereal Vehicles are exempt from this fate is evident the remoteness of their habitation securing them from both the rage and noisomness of these sulphureous flames 6. The most certain and most destractive execution that this Fire will doe must be upon the unrecovered Souls of Wicked Men and Daemons those that are so deeply sunk and drown'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the very consistency of their Vehicles does imprison them within the confines of this thick caliginous aire These Souls or Spirits therefore that have so inextricably entangled themselves in the Fate of this lower World giving up all their Senses to the momentany pleasures of the moist luxurious Principle which is the very seat of Death these in the mystical Philosophy of the Ancients are
the Nymphs to whom though they allot a long Series of years yet they doe not exempt them from mortality and fate And Demetrius in Plutarch pronounces expresly out of Hesiod that their life will be terminated with the Conflagration of the World from what the Poet intimates AEnigmatically 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7. But to leave these Poetical Riddles and take a more serious and distinct view of the condition of the Soul after the Conflagration of the Earth we shall finde five several sorts of Opinions concerning it The first hold That this unmerciful heat and fire will at last destroy and consume the Soul as well as the Body But this seems to me impossible that any created Substance should utterly destroy another Substance so as to reduce it to nothing For no part of Matter acting the most furiously upon another part thereof does effect that It can onely attenuate dissipate and disperse the parts and make them invisible But the Substance of the Soul is indissipable and indiscerpible and therefore remains entire whatever becomes of the Body or Vehicle 8. The second Opinion is That after long and tedious torture in these flames the Soul by a special act of Omnipotency is annihilated But me thinks this is to put Providence too much to her shifts as if God were so brought to a plunge in his creating a Creature of it self immortal that he must be fain to uncreate it again that is to say to annihilate it Besides that that divine Nemesis that lies within the compass of Philosophy never supposes any such forcible eruptions of the Deity into extraordinary effects but that all things are brought about by a wise and infallible or inevitable train of secondary Causes whether natural or free Agents 9. The third therefor â—â— to avoid these absurdities denies both absumption by Fire and annihilation but conceives That tediousness and extremity of pain makes the Soul at last of her self shrink from all commerce with Matter the immediate Principle of Union which we call Vital Congruity consisting of a certain modification of the Body or Vehicle as well as of the Soul which being spoiled and lost and the Soul thereby quite loosned from all sympathy with Body or Matter she becomes perfectly dead and sensless to all things by Axiome 36. and as they say will so remain for ever But this seems not so rational for as Aristotle somewhere has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wherefore so many entire immaterial Substances would be continued in being to all Eternity to no end nor purpose notwithstanding they may be made use of and actuate Matter again as well as ever 10. A fourth sort therefore of Speculators there is who conceive that after this solution of the Souls or Spirits of Wicked Men and Daemons from their Vehicles That their pain is continued to them even in that separate state they falling into an unquiet sleep full of furious tormenting Dreams that act as fiercely upon their Spirits as the external Fire did upon their Bodies But others except against this Opinion as a very uncertain Conjecture it supposing that which to them seems not so sound viz. That the Soul can act when it has lost all vital Union with the Matter which seems repugnant with that so intimate and essential aptitude it has to be united therewith And the Dreams of the Soul in the Body are not transacted without the help of the Animal Spirits in the Brain they usually symbolizing with their temper Whence they conclude that there is no certain ground to establish this Opinion upon 11. The last therefore to make all sure that there may be no inconvenience in admitting that the Souls or Spirits as well of evil Daemons as wicked Men disjoyned from their Vehicles by the force of that fatal Conflagration may subsist have excogitated an odde and unexpected Hypothesis That when this firing of the World has done due execution upon that unfortunate Crue and tedious and direful torture has we aried their afficted Ghosts into an utter recess from all Matter and thereby into a profound sleep or death that after a long Series of years when not onely the fury of the Fire is utterly slaked but that vast Atmosphere of smoak and vapours which was sent up during the time of the Earths Conflagration has returned back in copious showres of rain which will again make Seas and Rivers will binde and consolidate the ground and falling exceeding plentifully all over make the soil pleasant and fruitful and the Aire cool and wholsome that Nature recovering thus to her advantage and becoming youthful again and full of genital salt and moisture the Souls of all living Creatures belonging to these lower Regions of the Earth and Aire will awaken orderly in their proper places The Seas and Rivers will be again replenished with Fish the Earth will send forth all manner of Fowls four-footed Beasts and creeping things and the Souls of Men also shall then catch life from the more pure and balsamick parts of the Earth and be clothed again in terrestrial Bodies and lastly the AErial Genii that Element becoming again wholsome and vital shall in due order and time awaken and revive in the cool rorid Aire Which Expergeraction into life is accompanied say they with propensions answerable to those resolutions they made with themselves in those fiery torments and with which they fell into their long sleep 12. But the whole Hypothesis seems to be framed out of that dream of the Stoicks concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the World after the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thereof As if that of Seneca belonged to this case Epist. 36. Mors quam pertimescimus ac recusamus intermittit vitam non eripit Veniet iterum qui nos in lucem reponet dies quem multi recusarent nisi oblitos reduceret But how coursly the Stoicks Philosophize when they are once turned out of their rode-way of moral Sentences any one but moderately skilled in Nature and Metaphysicks may easily discern For what Errors can be more gross then those that they entertain of God of the Soul and of the Stars they making the two former Corporeal Substances and feeding the latter with the Vapours of the Earth affirming that the Sun sups up the water of the great Ocean to quench his thirst but that the Moon drinks off the lesser Rivers and Brooks which is as true as that the Ass drunk up the Moon Such conceits are more fit for Anacreon in a drunken fit to stumble upon who to invite his Companions to tipple composed that Catch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then for to be either found out or owned by a serious and sober Philosopher And yet Seneca mightily triumphs in this notion of foddering the Stars with the thick foggs of the Earth and declares his opinion with no mean
of all Philosophers in all Ages that held it Incorporeal 10. That the Gymnosophists of AEgypt the Indian Brachmans the Persian Magi and all the learned of the Jews were of this Opinion 11. A Catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same 12. That Aristotle was also of the same minde 13. Another more clear place in Aristotle to this purpose with Sennertus his Interpretation 14. An Answer to an Evasion of that Interpretation 15. The last and clearest place of all out of Aristotles Writings 237 Chap. 13. 1. The third part of the second Answer That the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the Souls Praeexistence 2. What are the chief causes of Forgetfulness 3. That they all conspire and that in the highest degree to destroy the memory of the other state 4. That Mischances and Diseases have quite taken away the Memory of things here in this life 5. That it is impossible for the Soul to remember her former condition without a Miracle 6. The fourth part of the second Answer That the entrance of a Praeexistent Soul into a Body is as intelligible as either Creation or Traduction 252 Chap. 14. 1. The knowledge of the difference of Vehicles and the Souls Union with them necessary for the understanding how she enters into this Earthly Body 2. That though the name of Vehicle be not in Aristotle yet the thing is there 3. A clearing of Aristotles notion of the Vehicle out of the Philosophy of Des-Cartes 4 A full interpretation of his Text. 5. That Aristotle makes onely two Vehicles Terrestrial and AEthereal which is more then sufficient to prove the Souls Oblivion of her former state 6 That the ordinary Vehicle of the Soul after death is Aire 7. The duration of the Soul in her several Vehicles 8. That the Union of the Soul with her Vehicle does not consist in Mechanical Congruity but Vital 9. In what Vital congruity of the Matter consists 10. In what Vital congruity of the Soul consists and how it changing the Soul may be free from her aiery Vehicle without violent precipitation out of it 11. Of the manner of the descent of Souls into Earthly Bodies 12. That there is so little absurdity in the Praeexistence of Souls that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our Demonstrations of her Immortality 257 Chap. 15. 1. What is meant by the Separation of the Soul with a confutation of Regius who would stop her in the dead Corps 2. An answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the Soul can get out of the Body 3. That there is a threefold Vital Congruity to be found in three several Subjects 4. That this triple Congruity is also competible to one Subject viz. the Soul of Man 5. That upon this Hypothesis it is very intelligible how the Soul may leave the Body 6. That her Union with the aerial Vehicle may be very suddain and as it were in a moment 7. That the Soul is actually separate from the Body is to be proved either by History or Reason Examples of the former kinde out of Pliny Herodotus Ficinus 8. Whether the Ecstasie of Witches prove an actual separation of the Soul from the Body 9. That this real separation of the Soul in Ecstasie is very possible 10. How the Soul may be loosned and leave the Body and yet return thither again 11. That though Reason and Will cannot in this life release the Soul from the Body yet Passion may and yet so that she may return again 12. The peculiar power of Desire for this purpose 13. Of Cardans Ecstasies and the Ointment of Witches and what truth there may be in their Confessions 267 Chap. 16. 1. That Souls departed communicate Dreams 2. Examples of Apparitions of Souls deceased 3. Of Apparitions in fields where pitcht Battels have been fought as also of those in Church-yards and other vaporous places 4. That the Spissitude of the Aire may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of Ghosts and Spectres 5. A further proof thereof from sundry examples 6. Of Marsilius Ficinus his appearing after death 7. With what sort of people such examples as these avail little 8. Reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those Apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased are indeed the Souls of them 286 Chap. 17. 1. The praeeminence of Arguments drawn from Reason above those from Story 2. The first step towards a Demonstration of Reason that the Soul acts out of her Body for that she is an immaterial Substance separable therefrom 3. The second That the immediate instruments for Sense Motion and Organization of the Body are certain subtile and tenuious Spirits 4. A comparison betwixt the Soul in the Body and the AErial Genii 5. Of the nature of Daemons from the account of Marcus the Eremite and how the Soul is presently such having once left this Body 6. An Objection concerning the Souls of Brutes to which is answered First by way of concesson 7. Secondly by confuting the Arguments for the former concession 8. That there is no rational doubt at all of the Humane Soul acting after death 9. A further Argument of her activity out of this Body from her conflicts with it while she is in it 10. As also from the general hope and belief of all Nations that they shall live after death 297 Chap. 18. 1. That the Faculties of our Souls and the nature of the immediate instrument of them the Spirits doe so nearly symbolize with those of Daemons that it seems reasonable if God did not on purpose hinder it that they would not fail to act out of this earthly Body 2. Or if they would his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple Vital Congruity to make all sure 3. A further demonstration of the present Truth from the Veracity of God 4. An Answer to an Objection against the foregoing Argument 5. Another Demonstration from His Justice 6. An Answer to an Objection 7. An Answer to another Objection 8. Another Argument from the Justice of God 9. An Objection answered 10. An invincible Demonstration of the Souls Immortality from the Divine Goodness 11. A more particular enforcement of that Argument and who they are upon whom it will work least 12. That the noblest and most vertuous Spirit is the most assurable of the Souls Immortality 311 BOOK III. Chap. 1. 1. WHY the Author treats of the state of the Soul after Death and in what Method 2. Arguments to prove that the Soul is ever united vitally with some Matter or other 3. Further Reasons to evince the same 4. That the Soul is capable of an aiery and aethereal Body as well as a terrestrial 5. That she ordinarily passes out of an earthly into an aerial Vehicle first 6. That in her aiery Vehicle she is capable of Sense Pleasure and Pain 7. That the main power of the Soul over her aerial