the respective parts and how are they kept to their specifick uniformities If we attempt Mechanical solutions we shall never give an account why the Wood-cock doth not sometimes borrow colours of the Mag-pye why the Lilly doth not exchange with the Daysie or why it is not sometime painted with a blush of the Rose Can unguided matter keep it self to such exact conformities as not in the least spot to vary from the species That divers Limners at a distance without either copy or designe should draw the same Picture to an undistinguishable exactness both in form colour and features this is more conceivable then that matter which is so diversified both in quantity quality motion site and infinite other circumstances should frame it self so absolutely according to the Idea of its kind And though the fury of that Apelles who threw his Pencil in a desperate rage upon the Picture he had essayed to draw once casually effected those lively representations which his Art could not describe yet 't is not likely that one of a thousand such praecipitancies should be crowned with so an unexpected an issue For though blind matter might reach some elegancies in individual effects yet specifick conformities can be no unadvised productions but in greatest likelyhood are regulated by the immediate efficiency of some knowing agent which whether it be seminal Forms according to the Platonical Principles or what ever else we please to suppose the manner of its working is to us unknown or if these effects are meerly Mechanical yet to learn the method of such operations may be and hath indeed been ingeniously attempted but I think cannot be performed to the satisfaction of severer examination That all bodies both Animal Vegetable and Inanimate are form'd out of such particles of matter which by reason of their figures will not cohaere or lie together but in such an order as is necessary to such a specifical formation and that therein they naturally of themselves concurre and reside is a pretty conceit and there are experiments that credit it If after a decoction of hearbs in a Winter-night we expose the liquor to the frigid air we may observe in the morning under a crust of Ice the perfect appearance both in figure and colour of the Plants that were taken from it But if we break the aqueous Crystal those pretty images dis-appear and are presently dissolved Now these airy Vegetables are presumed to have been made by the reliques of these plantal emissions whose avolation was prevented by the condensed inclosure And therefore playing up and down for a while within their liquid prison they at last settle together in their natural order and the Atomes of each part finding out their proper place at length rest in their methodical Situation till by breaking the Ice they are disturbed and those counterfeit compositions are scatter'd into their first Indivisibles This Hypothesis may yet seem to receive further confirmation from the artificial resurrection of Plants from their ashes which Chymists are so well acquainted with And besides that Salt dissolved upon fixation returns to its affected cubes the regular figures of Minerals as the Hexagonal of Crystal the Hemi-sphaerical of the Fairy-stone the stellar figure of the stone Asteria and such like seem to look with probability upon this way of formation And I must needs say 't is handsomly conjectur'd But yet what those figures are that should be thus mechanically adapted to fall so unerringly into regular compositions is beyond our faculties to conceive or determine And how those heterogeneous atomes for such their figures are supposed should by themselves hit so exactly into their proper residence in the midst of such tumultuary motions cross thwartings and arietations of other particles especially when for one way of hitting right there are thousands of missing there 's no Hypothesis yet extant can resolve us And yet had heaven afforded that miracle of men the Illustrious Des-Cartes a longer day on earth we might have expected the utmost of what ingenuity could perform herein but his immature Fate hath unhappily disappointed us and prevented the most desirable Complement of his not to be equall'd Philosophy § 2. 2. It 's no less difficult to give an account how the Parts of the Matter of our Bodies are united For though superficial Enquirers may easily satisfie themselves by answering that it is done by muscles nerves and other like strings and ligaments which Nature hath destin'd to that office yet if we seek for an account how the parts of these do cohere we shall find the cause to be as latent as the effect of easie discovery Nothing with any shew of success hath yet appeared on the Philosophick Stage but the opinion of Des-Cartes that the Parts of Matter are united by Rest. Neither can I conceive how any thing can be substituted in its room more congruous to reason since Rest is most opposite to Motion the immediate cause of disunion But yet I cannot see how this can satisfie touching the almost indissolvible coherence of some bodies and the fragility and solubility of others For if the Union of the Parts consist only in Rest it would seem that a bagg of dust would be of as firm a consistence as that of Marble or Adamant a Bar of Iron will be as easily broken as a Tobacco-pipe and Bajazets Cage had been but a sorry Prison The Aegyptian Pyramids would have been sooner lost then the Names of them that built them and as easily blown away as those inverst ones of smoke If it be pretended for a difference that the parts of solid bodies are held together by hooks and angulous involutions I say this comes not home For the coherence of the parts of these hooks as hath been noted will be of as difficult a conception as the former And we must either suppose an infinite of them holding together on one another or at last come to parts that are united by a meer juxta-position Yea could we suppose the former yet the coherence of these would be like the hanging together of an infinite such of Dust which Hypothesis would spoil the Proverb and a rope of sand should be no more a phrase for Labour in vain For unless there be something upon which all the rest may depend for their cohesion the hanging of one by another will signifie no more then the mutual dependence of causes and effects in an infinite Series without a First the admission of which Atheism would applaud But yet to do the Master of Mechanicks right somewhat of more validity in the behalf of this Hypothesis may be assign'd Which is that the closeness and compactness of the Parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union For every thing continues in the condition wherein it is except something more powerful alter it And therefore the parts that rest close together must continue in the same relation to each other till some other body by motion disjoyn them
the causes and manner of their rotations as also the reasons of all the Planetary Phaenomena and of the Comets their nature and the causes of all their irregular appearings To these the knowledge of the intricate doctrine of motion the powers proportions and laws thereof is requisite And thus we are engaged in the objects of Geometry and Arithmetick yea the whole Mathematicks must be contributary and to them all Nature payes a subsidy Besides plants are partly material'd of water with which they are furnisht either from subterranean Fountains or the Clouds Now to have the true Theory of the former we must trace the nature of the Sea its origen and hereto its remarkable motions of flux and reflux This again directs us to the Moon and the rest of the Celestial faces The moisture that comes from the Clouds is drawn up in vapours To the Scientifical discernment of which we must know the nature and manner of that action their suspense in the middle region the qualities of that place and the causes and manner of their precipitating thence again and so the reason of the Sphaerical figure of the drops the causes of Windes Hail Snow Thunder Lightning with all other igneous appearances with the whole Physiology of Meteors must be enquired into And again 3 in our disquisition into the formal Causes the knowledge of the nature of colours is necessary to compleat the Science To be inform'd of this we must know what light is and light being effected by a motion on the Organs of sense 't will be a necessary requisite to understand the nature of our sensitive faculties and to them the essence of the soul and other spiritual subsistences The manner how it is materially united and how it is aware of corporeal motion The seat of sense and the place where 't is principally affected which cannot be known but by the Anatomy of our parts and the knowledge of their Mechanical structure And if further 4 we contemplate the end of this minute effect its principal final Cause being the glory of its Maker leads us into Divinity and for its subordinate as 't is design'd for alimental sustenance to living creatures and medicinal uses to man we are conducted into Zoography and the whole body of Physick Thus then to the knowledge of the most contemptible effect in nature 't is necessary to know the whole Syntax of Causes and their particular circumstances and modes of action Nay we know nothing till we know our selves which are the summary of all the world without us and the Index of the Creation Nor can we know our selves without the Physiology of corporeal Nature and the Metaphysicks of Souls and Angels So then every Science borrows from all the rest and we cannot attain any single one without the Encyclopaedy 5 The knowledge we have comes from our Senses and the Dogmatist can go no higher for the original of his certainty Now let the Sciolist tell me why things must needs be so as his individual senses represent them Is he sure that objects are not otherwise sensed by others then they are by him and why must his sense be the infallible Criterion It may be what is white to us is black to Negroes and our Angels to them are Fiends Diversity of constitution or other circumstances varies the sensation and to them of Iava Pepper is cold And though we agree in a common name yet it may be I have the same representation from yellow that another hath from green Thus two look upon an Alabaster Statue he call's it white and I assent to the appellation but how can I discover that his inward sense on 't is the same that mine is It may be Alabaster is represented to him as jet is to me and yet it is white to us both We accord in the name but it 's beyond our knowledge whether we do so in the conception answering it Yea the contrary is not without its probability For though the Images Motions or whatever else is the cause of sense may be alike as from the object yet may the representations be varyed according to the nature and quality of the Recipient That 's one thing to us looking through a tube which is another to our naked eyes The same things seem otherwise through a green glass then they do through a red Thus objects have a different appearance when the eye is violently any way distorted from that they have when our Organs are in their proper site and figure and some extraordinary alterations in the Brain duplicate that which is but a single object to our undistemper'd Sentient Thus that 's of one colour to us standing in one place which hath a contrary aspect in another as in those versatile representations in the neck of a Dove and folds of Scarlet And as great diversity might have been exemplified in the other senses but for brevity I omit them Now then since so many various circumstances concurre to every individual constitution and every mans senses differing as much from others in its figure colour site and infinite other particularities in the Organization as any one mans can from it self through diverse accidental variations it cannot well be suppos'd otherwise but that the conceptions convey'd by them must be as diverse Thus one mans eyes are more protuberant and swelling out anothers more sunk and depressed One mans bright and sparkling and as it were swimming in a subtile lucid moisture anothers more dull and heavy and destitute of that spirituous humidity The colour of mens eyes is various nor is there less diversity in their quantitative proportions And if we look further into the more inward constitution there 's more variety in the internal configurations than in the visible out-side For let us consider the different qualities of the Optick nerves humors tunicles and spirits the divers figurings of the brain the strings or filaments thereof their difference in tenuity and aptness for motion and as many other circumstances as there are individuals in humane nature all these are diversified according to the difference of each Crasis and are as unlike as our faces From these diversities in all likelyhood will arise as much difference in the manner of the reception of the Images and consequently as various sensations So then how objects are represented to my self I cannot be ignorant being conscious to mine own cogitations but in what manner they are received and what impresses they make upon the so differing organs of another he only knows that feels them There is an obvious an easie objection which I have sufficiently caveated against and with the considerate it will signifie no more then the inadvertency of the Objectors 'T will be thought by slight discerners a ridiculous Paradox that all men should not conceive of the objects of sense alike since their agreement in the appellation seems so strong an argument of the identity of the sentiment All for instance say that Snow is white and
A display of the Perfections of Innocence with a conjecture at the manner of Adams knowledge viz. that it was by the large extent of his Senses founded upon the supposition of the perfection of his Faculties and induc'd from two Philosophick principles OUr misery is not of yesterday but as antient as the first Criminal and the ignorance we are involved in almost coaeval with the humane nature not that we were made so by our God but our selves we were his creatures sin and misery were ours To make way for what follows we will go to the root of our antient happiness and now ruines that we may discover both what the Man was and what the Sinner is The Eternal Wisdome having made that Creature whose crown it was to be like his Maker enrich't him with those ennoblements which were worthy him that gave them and made no less for the benefit of their receiver then the glory of their Author And as the Primogenial light which at first was difused over the face of the unfashion'd Chaos was afterwards by Divine appointment gathered into the Sun and Stars and other lucid bodies which shine with an underived lustre so those scatter'd perfections which are divided among the several cantons of created beings were as it were constellated and summ'd up in this Epitome of the greater World MAN His then blisful injoyments anticipated the aspires to be like GODS being in a condition not to be added to as much as in desire and the unlikeness of it to our now miserable because Apostate state makes it almost as impossible to be conceiv'd as to be regain'd A condition which was envied by creatures that nature had plac't a sphaere above us and such as differ'd not much from glory and blessed immortality but in perpetuity and duration For since the most despicable and disregarded pieces of decay'd nature are so curiously wrought and adorned with such eminent signatures of Divine wisdome as speak it their Author and that after a curse brought upon a disorder'd Universe what think we was done unto him whom the King delighted to honour and what was the portion of Heâ—â—ens Favorite when Omniscience it self sat in Councel to furnish him with all those accomplishments which his specifick capacity could contain which questionless were as much above the Hyperbolies that fond Poetry bestowes upon its admired objects as their flatter'd beauties are really below them The most refined glories of subcoelestial excellencies are but more faint resemblances of these For all the powers and faculties of this copy of the Divinity this meddal of God were as perfect as beauty and harmony in Idea The soul was not clogg'd by the inactivity of its masse as ours nor hindered in its actings by the distemperature of indisposed organs Passions kept their place as servants of the higher powers and durst not arrogate the Throne as now no countermands came hence to repeal the decretals of the Regal faculties that Batrachomyomachia of one passion against an other and both against reason was yet unborn Man was never at odds with himself till he was at odds with the commands of his Maker There was no jarring or disharmony in the faculties till sin untun'd them He could no sooner say to one power go but it went nor to another do this but it did it Even the senses the Souls windows were without any spot or opacity to liken them to the purest Crystal were to debase them by the comparison for their acumen and strength depending on the delicacy and apt disposure of the organs and spirits by which outward motions are conveyed to the judgement-seat of the Soul those of Innocence must needs infinitely more transcend ours then the senses of sprightful youth doth them of frozen decrepit age Adam needed no Spectacles The acuteness of his natural Opticks if conjecture may have credit shew'd him much of the Coelestial magnificence and bravery without a Galilaeo's tube And 't is most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much of the upper World as we with all the advantages of art It may be 't was as absurd even in the judgement of his senses that the Sun and Stars should be so very much less then this Globe as the contrary seems in ours and 't is not unlikely that he had as clear a perception of the earths motion as we think we have of its quiescence Thus the accuracy of his knowledge of natural effects might probably arise from his sensible perception of their causes What the experiences of many ages will scarce afford us at this distance from perfection his quicker senses could teach in a moment And whereas we patch up a piece of Philosophy from a few industriously gather'd and yet scarce well observ'd or digested experiments his knowledge was compleatly built upon the certain extemporary notice of his comprehensive unerring faculties His sight could inform him whether the Loadstone doth attract by Atomical Effluviums which may gain the more credit by the consideration of what some affirm that by the help of Microscopes they have beheld the subtile streams issuing from the beloved Minerall It may be he saw the motion of the bloud and spirits through the transparent skin as we do the workings of those little industrious Animals through a hive of glasse The Mysterious influence of the Moon and its causality on the seas motion was no question in his Philosophy no more then a Clocks motion is in ours where our senses may inform us of its cause Sympathies and Antipathies were to him no occult qualities Causes are hid in night and obscurity from us which were all Sun to him Now to shew the reasonableness of this Hypothesis I 'le suppose what I think few will deny That God adorn'd that creature which was a transcript of himself with all the perfections its capacity could bear And that this great extent of the senses Horizon was a perfection easily competible to sinless humanity will appear by the improvement of the two following principles First as far as the operation of nature reacheth it works by corporeal instruments If the Coelestial lights influence our Earth and advance the Production of Minerals in their hidden beds it is done by material communications And if there be any virtue proceeding from the Pole to direct the motion of the enamour'd steel however unobserv'd those secret influences may be they work not but by corporal Application Secondly Sense is made by motion caus'd by bodily impression on the organ and continued to the brain and centre of perception Hence it is manifest that all bodies are in themselves sensible in as much as they can impress this motion which is the immediate cause of sensation And therefore as in the former Principle the most distant efficients working by a corporeal causality if it be not perceiv'd the non-perception must arise from the dulness and imperfection of the faculty and not any defect in the object So then is it probable that
formally heat is not in the fire but is an expression of our sentiment Yet in propriety of speech the Senses themselves are never deceived but only administer an occasion of deceit to the understanding prov'd by reason and the Authority of St. Austin SEcondly the best Philosophy the deserved Title of the Cartesian derives all sensitive perception from Motion and corporal impress some account of which we have above given Not that the Formality of it consists in material Reaction as Master Hobbs affirms totally excluding any immaterial concurrence But that the representations of Objects to the Soul the only animadversive principle are conveyed by motions made upon the immediate Instruments of Sense So that the diversity of our Sensations ariseth from the diversity of the motion or figure of the object which in a different manner affect the Brain whence the Soul hath its immediate intelligence of the quality of what is presented Thus the different effects which fire and water have on us which we call heat and cold result from the so differing configuration and agitation of their Particles and not from I know not what Chimerical beings supposed to inhere in the objects their cause and thence to be propagated by many petty imaginary productions to the seat of Sense So that what we term heat and cold and other qualities are not properly according to Philosophical rigour in the Bodies their Efficients but are rather Names expressing our passions and therefore not strictly attributable to any thing without us but by extrinsick denomination as Vision to the Wall This I conceive to be an Hypothesis well worthy a rational belief and yet is it so abhorrent from the Vulgar that they would assoon believe Anaxagoras that snow is black as him that should affirm it is not white and if any should in earnest assert that the fire is not formally hot it would be thought that the heat of his brain had fitted him for Anticyra and that his head were so to madness For it is conceiv'd to be as certain as our faculties can make it that the same qualities which we resent within us are in the object their Source And yet this confidence is grounded on no better foundation then a delusory prejudice and the vote of misapplyed sensations which have no warrant to determine either one or other I may indeed conclude that I am formally hot or cold I feel it But whether these qualities are formally or only eminently in their producent is beyond the knowledge of the sensitive Even the Peripatetick Philosophy will teach us that heat is not in the Body of the Sun but only vertually and as in its cause though it be the Fountain and great Distributour of warmth to the neather Creation and yet none urge the evidence of sense to disprove it Neither can it with any more Justice be alledged against this Hypothesis For if it be so as Des-Cartes would have it yet sense would constantly present it to us as Now. We should finde heat as infallible an attendant upon fire and the increase thereof by the same degrees in our approach to the Fountain calefacient and the same excess within the Visible substance as Now which yet I think to be the chief inducements to the adverse belief For Fire I retain the instance which yet may be applyed to other cases being constant in its specifical motions in those smaller derivations of it which are its instruments of action and therefore in the same manner striking the sentient though gradually varying according to the proportions of more or less quantity or agitation c. will not fail to produce the same effect in us which we call heat when ever we are within the Orb of its activity And the heat must needs be augmented by proximity and most of all within the Flame because of the more violent motion of the particles there which therefore begets in us a stronger sense Now if this motive Energie the Instrument of this active Element must be called Heat let it be so I contend not I know not how otherwise to call it To impose names is part of the Peoples Charter and I fight not with Words Only I would not that the Idea of our Passions should be apply'd to any thing without us when it hath its subject no where but in our selves This is the grand deceit which my design is to detect and if possible to rectifie Thus we have seen two notorious instances of sensitive deception which justifie the charge of Petron. Arbiter Fallunt nos oculi vagique sensus Oppressâ ratione mentiuntur And yet to speak properly and to do our senses right simply they are not deceived but only administer an occasion to our forward understandings to deceive themselves and so though they are some way accessory to our delusion yet the more principal faculties are the Capital offenders Thus if the Senses represent the Earth as fixt and immoveable they give us the truth of their Sentiments To sense it is so and it would be deceit to present it otherwise For as we have shewn though it do move in it self it rests to us who are carry'd with it And it must needs be to sense unalterably quiescent in that our Rotation with it prevents the variety of successive Impress which only renders motion sensible And so if we erroneously attribute our particular incommunicable sensations to things which do no more resemble them then the effect doth its aequivocal cause our senses are not in fault but our precipitate judgements We feel such or such a sentiment within us and herein is no cheat or misprison 't is truly so and our sense concludes nothing of its Rise or Origine But if hence our Understandings falsly deduct that there is the same quality in the external Impressor 't is it is criminal our sense is innocent When the Ear tingles we really hear a sound If we judge it without us it 's the fallacy of our Iudgments The apparitions of our frighted Phancies are real sensibles But if we translate them without the compass of our Brains and apprehend them as external objects it 's the unwary rashness of our Understanding deludes us And if our disaffected Palates resent nought but bitterness from our choicest viands we truly tast the unpleasing quality though falsly conceive it in that which is no more then the occasion of its production If any find fault with the novelty of the notion the learned St. Austin stands ready to confute the charge and they who revere Antiquity will derive satisfaction from so venerable a suffrage He tells us Si quis remum frangi in aquâ opinatur cùm aufertur integrari non malum habet internuncium sed malus est Iudex And onward to this purpose The sense could not otherwise perceive it in the water neither ought it For since the Water is one thing and the Air another 't is requisite and necessary that the sense should be as
names from their known meaning to Senses most alien and to darken speech by words without knowledge are none of the most inconsiderable faults of this Philosophy To reckon them in their particular instances would puzzle Archimedes Now hence the genuine Idea's of the Mind are adulterate and the Things themselves lost in a crowd of Names and Intentional nothings Thus these Verbosities do emasculate the Understanding and render it slight and frivolous as its objects Me thinks the late Voluminous Iesuites those Laplanders of Peripateticism do but subtilly trifle and their Philosophick undertakings are much like his who spent his time in darting Cumming-seeds through the Eye of a Needle One would think they were impregnated as are the Mares in Cappadocia they are big of words their tedious Volumes have the Tympany and bring forth the wind To me a cursus Philosophicus is but an Impertinency in Folio and the studying of them a laborious idleness 'T is here that things are crumbled into notional Atomes and the substance evaporated into an imaginary Aether The Intellect that can feed on this air is a Chamaelion and a meer inflated skin From this stock grew School-divinity which is but Peripateticism in a Theological Livery A School-man is the Ghost of the Stagirite in a Body of condensed Air and Thomas but Aristotle sainted But to make good our charge against the Philosophy of the Schools by a more close surveying it That its Principles are steril unsatisfying Verbosities cannot escape the notice of the most shallow Inquirer To begin at the bottom their Materia prima is a meer chimaera If we can fix a determinate conceit of nothing that 's the Idea on 't And Nec quid nec quale nec quantum is as as apposite a definition of nothing as can be If we would conceive this Imaginary Matter we must deny all things of it that we can conceive and what remains is the thing we look for And should we allow it all which its Assertors assign it viz. Quantity interminate 't is still but an empty extended capacity and therefore at the best but like that Space which we imagine was before the beginning of Time and will be after the Universal Flames 'T is easie to draw a Parallelism between that Ancient and this more Modern Nothing and in all things to make good its resemblance to that Commentitious Inanity The Peripatetick matter is a pure unactuated Power and this conceited Vacuum a meer Receptibility Matter is suppos'd indeterminate and Space is so The pretended first matter is capable of all forms And the imaginary space is receptive of any body The matter can be actuated at once but by a single Informant and Space is replenisht by one Corporal Inexistence Matter cannot naturally subsist uninform'd And Nature avoids vacuity in space The matter is ingenerate and beyond corruption And the space was before and will be after either The matter in all things is but one and the space most uniform Thus the Foundation-Principle of Peripateticism runs but parallel to an acknowledg'd nothing and their agreement in essential characters makes rather an Identity then a Parity but that Imaginary space hath more to plead for its reality then the matter hath and herein only are they dissimilar For that hath no dependence on the bodies which possess it but was before them and will survive them whereas this essentially relies on the form and cannot subsist without it Which yet me thinks is little better then an absurdity that the cause should be an Eleemosynary for its subsistence to its effect and a nature posterior to and dependent on it self This dependentia a posteriori though in a diverse way of causality my reason could never away with Yea one of their own Oviedo a Spanish Jesuite hath effectually impugn'd it So then there 's nothing real answering this Imaginary Proteus and Materia prima hath as much of being as Mons aureus But to take a step further their Form is as obnoxious and as dry a word as the formention'd Nominal I 'le not spend time in an industrious confutation The subject is dry and I long to be out on 't with a note on its imaginary Origine I 'le leave it It 's source is as obscure as Nile's and Potentia materiae is a pitiful figment Did it suppose any thing of the form to pre-exist in the matter as the seminal of its being 't were tolerable sense to say it were educed from it But by educing the affirmers only mean a producing in it with a subjective dependence on its Recipient a very fine signification of Eduction which answers not the question whence 't is derived but into what it is received The question is of the terminus à quo and the answer of the subject So that all that can be made of this power of the matter is meerly a receptive capacity and we may as well affirm that the world was educ'd out of the power of the imaginary space and give that as a sufficient account of its Original And in this language to grow rich were to educe money out of the power of the Pocket To make a full discovery of the jejune emptiness of these Philosophick Principles were a task as easie for an ordinary undertaker as it would be tedious to an Ingenious Reader Gassendus hath excellently perform'd it and I am confident to the conviction of those whom nobler Principles have not yet emancipated from that degenerous slavery I shall not attempt a work that hath been finished by such an Apelles Only to give an hint more of this verbal emptiness a short view of a definition or two will be current evidence which though in Greek or Latine they amuse us yet a vernacular translation unmasks them and if we make them speak English the cheat is transparent Light is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith that Philosophy In English the Act of a perspicuous body Sure Aristotle here transgrest his Topicks and if this definition be clearer and more known then the thing defin'd midnight may vye for conspicuity with noon Is not light more known then this insignificant Energie And what 's a diaphanous body but the Lights medium the Air so that light is the act of the Air which definition spoils the Riddle and makes it no wonder a man should see by night as well as by day Thus is light darkned by an illustration and the Sun it self is wrap'd up in obscuring clouds As if light were best seen by darkness as light inaccessible is known by Ignorance If Lux be Umbra Dei this definition is Umbra lucis The Infant that was last enlarged from its maternal cels knows more what light is then this definition teacheth Again that motion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. is as insignificant as the former By the most favourable interpretation of that unintelligible Entelechy It is but an act of a being in power as it is in power The construing of which to
among a croud of Saylors in a storm Nor do the eager clamors of contending Disputants yeeld any more relief to eclipsed Truth then did the sounding Brass of old to the labouring Moon When it 's under question 't were as good flip cross and pile as to dispute for 't and to play a game at Chess for an opinion in Philosophy as my self and an ingenious Friend have sometime sported is as likely a way to determine Thus the Peripatetick procedure is inept for Philosophical solutions The Lot were as equitable a decision as their empty Loquacities 'T is these nugacious Disputations that have been the great hinderance to the more improveable parts of Learning and the modern Retainers to the Stagirite have spent their sweat and pains upon the most litigious parts of his Philosophy while those that find less play for the contending Genius are incultivate Thus Logick Physicks Metaphysicks are the burden of Volumes and the dayly entertainment of the Disputing Schools while the more profitable doctrines of the Heavens Meteors Minerals Animals as also the more practical ones of Politicks and Oeconomicks are scarce so much as glanc'd at And the indisputable Mathematicks the only Science Heaven hath yet vouchsaf't Humanity have but few Votaries among the slaves of the Stagirite What the late promoters of the Aristotelian Philosophy have writ on all these so fertile subjects can scarce compare with the single disputes about Materia prima Nor hath Humane Science monopoliz'd the damage that hath sprung from this Root of Evils Theology hath been as deep a sharer The Volumes of the Schoolmen are deplorable evidence of Peripatetick depravations And Luther's censure of that Divinity Quam primum apparuit Theologia Scholastica evanuit Theologia Crucis is neither uncharitable nor unjust This hath mudded the Fountain of Certainty with notional and Ethnick admixtions and platted the head of Evangelical truth as the Iews did its Author's with a Crown of thorns Here the most obvious Verity is subtiliz'd into niceties and spun into a thread indiscernible by common Opticks but through the spectacles of the adored Heathen This hath robb'd the Christian world of its unity and peace and made the Church the Stage of everlasting contentions And while Aristotle is made the Centre of Truth and Unity what hope of reconciling And yet most of these Scholastick controversies are ultimately resolv'd into the subtilties of his Philosophy And me thinks an Athenian should not be the best guide to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nor an Idolater to that God he neither knew nor owned When I read the eager contests of these Notional Theologues about things that are not I cannot but think of the pair of wise ones that fought for the middle And me thinks many of their Controversies are such as if we and our Antipodes should strive who were uppermost their title to Truth is equal He that divided his Text into one part did but imitate the Schoolmen in their coincident distinctions And the best of their curiosities are but like paint on Glass which intercepts and dyes the light the more desirable splendor I cannot look upon their elaborate trifles but with a sad reflexion on the degenerate state of our lapsed Intellects and as deep a resentment of the mischiefs of this School-Philosophy CHAP. XVIII 3. It gives no account of the Phaenomena those that are remoter it attempts not It speaks nothing pertinent in the most ordinary It s circular and general way of Solution It resolves all things into occult qualities The absurdity of the Aristotelian Hypothesis of the Heavens The Gallaxy is no meteor the Heavens are corruptible Comets are above the Moon The Sphear of fire derided Aristotle convicted of several other false assertions 3. THe Aristotelian Hypotheses give a very dry and jejune account of Nature's Phaenomena For as to its more mysterious reserves Peripatetick enquiry hath left them unattempted and the most forward notional Dictators sit down here in a contented ignorance and as if nothing more were knowable then is already discover'd they put stop to all endeavours of their Solution Qualities that were Occult to Aristotle must be so to us and we must not Philosophize beyond Sympathy and Antipathy whereas indeed the Rarities of Nature are in these Recesses and its most excellent operations Cryptick to common discernment Modern Ingenuity expects Wonders from Magnetick discoveries And while we know but its more sensible ways of working we are but vulgar Philosophers and not likely to help the World to any considerable Theories Till the Fountains of the great deeps are broken up Knowledge is not likely to cover the Earth as the waters the Sea Nor is the Aristotelian Philosophy guilty of this sloth and Philosophick penury only in remoter abstrusities but in solving the most ordinary causalities it is as defective and unsatisfying Even the most common productions are here resolv'd into Celestial influences Elemental combinations active and passive principles and such generalities while the particular manner of them is as hidden as sympathies And if we follow manifest qualities beyond the empty signification of their Names we shall find them as occult as those which are professedly so That heavy Bodies descend by gravity is no better an account then we might expect from a Rustick and again that Gravity is a quality whereby an heavy body descends is an impertinent Circle and teacheth nothing The feigned Central alliciency is but a word and the manner of it still occult That the fire burns by a quality called heat is an empty dry return to the Question and leaves us still ignorant of the immediate way of igneous solutions The accounts that this Philosophy gives by other Qualities are of the same Gender with these So that to say the Loadstone draws Iron by magnetick attraction and that the Sea moves by flux and reflux were as satisfying as these Hypotheses and the solution were as pertinent In the Qualities this Philosophy calls manifest nothing is so but the effects For the heat we feel is but the effect of the fire and the pressure we are sensible of but the effect of the descending body And effects whose causes are confessedly occult are as much within the sphear of our Senses and our Eyes will inform us of the motion of the Steel to its attrahent Thus Peripatetick Philosophy resolves all things into Occult qualities and the Dogmatists are the only Scepticks Even to them that pretend so much to Science the world is circumscrib'd with a Gyges his Ring and is intellectually invisible And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will best become the mouth of a Peripatetick For by their way of disquisition there can no more be truly comprehended then what 's known by every common Ignorant But ingenious inquiry will not be contented with such vulgar frigidities But further if we look into the Aristotelian Comments on the largest Volumes of the Universe The works of the fourth day are there as confused and disorderly as
Cortex of sensible Appearances He were a poor Physitian that had no more Anatomy then were to be gather'd from the Physnomy Yea the most common Phaenomena can be neither known nor improved without insight into the more hidden frame For Nature works by an Invisible Hand in all things And till Peripateticism can shew us further then those gross solutions of Qualities and Elements 't will never make us Benefactors to the World nor considerable Discoverers But its experienc'd sterility through so many hundred years drives Hope to desperation We expect greater things from Neoterick endeavours The Cartesian Philosophy in this regard hath shewn the World the way to be happy Me thinks this Age seems resolved to bequeath posterity somewhat to remember it And the glorious Undertakers wherewith Heaven hath blest our Days will leave the world better provided then they found it And whereas in former times such generous free-spirited Worthies were as the Rare newly observed Stars a single one the wonder of an Age In ours they are like the lights of the greater size that twinkle in the Starry Firmament And this last Century can glory in numerous constellations Should those Heroes go on as they have happily begun they 'll fill the world with wonders And I doubt not but posterity will find many things that are now but Rumors verified into practical Realities It may be some Ages hence a voyage to the Southern unknown Tracts yea possibly the Moon will not be more strange then one to America To them that come after us it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly into remotest Regions as now a pair of Boots to ride a Iourney And to conferr at the distance of the Indies by Sympathetick conveyances may be as usual to future times as to us in a litterary correspondence The restauration of gray hairs to Iuvenility and renewing the exhausted marrow may at length be effected without a miracle And the turning of the now comparatively desert world into a Paradise may not improbably be expected from late Agriculture Now those that judge by the narrowness of former Principles will smile at these Paradoxical expectations But questionless those great Inventions that have in these later Ages altered the face of all things in their naked proposals and meer suppositions were to former times as ridiculous To have talk'd of a new Earth to have been discovered had been a Romance to Antiquity And to sayl without sight of Stars or shoars by the guidance of a Mineral a story more absurd then the flight of Daedalus That men should speak after their tongues were ashes or communicate with each other in differing Hemisphears before the Invention of Letters could not but have been thought a fiction Antiquity would not have believed the almost incredible force of our Canons and would as coldly have entertain'd the wonders of the Telescope In these we all condemn antique incredulity and 't is likely Posterity will have as much cause to pity ours But yet notwithstanding this straightness of shallow observers there are a set of enlarged souls that are more judiciously credulous and those who are acquainted with the fecundity of Cartesian Principles and the diligent and ingenuous endeavours of so many true Philosophers will despair of nothing 5. But again the Aristotelian Philosophy is in some things impious and inconsistent with Divinity and in many more inconsistent with it self That the Resurrection is impossible That God understands not all things That the world was from Eternity That there 's no substantial form but moves some Orb That the first Mover moves by an Eternal Immutable Necessity That if the world and motion were not from Eternity then God was Idle were all the Assertions of Aristotle which Theology pronounceth impieties Which yet we need not strange at from one of whom a Father saith Nec Deum coluit nec curavit Especially if it be as Philoponus affirms that he philosophiz'd by command from the Oracle Of the Aristotelian contradictions Gassendus hath presented us with a Catalogue We 'll instance in a few of them In one place he saith The Planets scintillation is not seen because of their propinquity but that of the rising and setting Sun is because of its distance and yet in another place he makes the Sun nearer us then they are He saith that the Elements are not Eternal and seeks to prove it and yet he makes the world so and the Elements its parts In his Meteors he saith no Dew is produced in the Wind and yet afterwards admits it under the South and none under the North. In one place he defines a vapour humid and cold and in another humid and hot He saith the faculty of speaking is a sense and yet before he allow'd but five In one place that Nature doth all things best and in another that it makes more evil then good And somewhere he contradicts himself within a line saying that an Immoveable Mover hath no principle of Motion 'T would be tedious to mention more and the qualiiy of a digression will not allow it Thus we have as briefly as the subject would bear animadverted on the so much admired Philosophy of Aristotle The nobler Spirits of the Age are disengaged from those detected vanities And the now Adorers of that Philosophy are few but such narrow souls that know no other Or if any of them look beyond the leaves of their Master yet they try other Principles by a Jury of his and scan Cartes with Genus and Species From the former sort I may hope they 'l pardon this attempt and for the latter I value not their censure Thus then we may conclude upon the whole that the stamp of Authority can make Leather as current as Gold and that there 's nothing so contemptible but Antiquity can render it august and excellent But because the Fooleries of some affected Novelists have discredited new discoveries and render'd the very mention suspected of Vanity at least and in points Divine of Heresie It will be necessary to add that I intend not the former discourse in favour of any new-broach'd conceit in Divinity For I own no Opinion there which cannot plead the prescription of above sixteen hundred There 's nothing I have more sadly resented then the phrenetick whimsies with which our Age abounds and therefore am not likely to Patron them In Theology I put as great a difference between our New Lights and Ancient Truths as between the Sun and an unconcocted evanid Meteor Though I confess that in Philosophy I 'm a Seeker yet cannot believe that a Sceptick in Philosophy must be one in Divinity Gospel-Light began in it Zenith and as some say the Sun was created in its Meridian strength and lustre But the beginnings of Philosophy were in a Crepusculous obscurity and it 's yet scarse past the Dawn Divine Truths were most pure in their source and Time could not perfect what Eternity began our Divinity like the Grand-father
their conveyance and their regular direction is handsomly explicated by that learned Knight and recommended to the Ingenious by most witty and becoming illustrations It is out of my way here to enquire whether the Anima Mundi be not a better account then any Mechanical Solutions The former is more desperate the later hath more of ingenuity then solid satisfaction It is enough for me that de facto there is such an entercourse between the Magnetick unguent and the vulnerated body and I need not be solicitous of the Cause These theories I presume will not be importunate to the ingenious and therefore I have taken the liberty which the quality of an Essay will well enough allow of to touch upon them though seemingly collateral to my scope And yet I think they are but seemingly so since they do pertinently illustrate my design viz. That what seems impossible to us may not be so in Nature and therefore the Dogmatist wants this to compleat his demonstration that 't is impossible to be otherwise Now I intend not by any thing here to invalidate the certainty of truths either Mathematical or Divine These are superstructed on principles that cannot fail us except our faculties do constantly abuse us Our religious foundations are fastned at the pillars of the intellectual world and the grand Articles of our Belief as demonstrable as Geometry Nor will ever either the subtile attempts of the resolved Atheist or the passionate Hurricanoes of the phrentick Enthusiast any more be able to prevail against the reason our Faith is built on than the blustring windes to blow out the Sun And for Mathematical Sciences he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of Hellebore Nor yet can the Dogmatist make much of these concessions in favour of his pretended Science for our discourse comes not within the circle of the former and for the later the knowledge we have of the Mathematicks hath no reason to elate us since by them we know but numbers and figures creatures of our own and are yet ignorant of our Maker's 3. We cannot know any thing of Nature but by an Analysis of it to its true initial causes and till we know the first springs of natural motions we are still but ignorants These are the Alphabet of Science and Nature cannot be read without them Now who dares pretend to have seen the prime motive causes or to have had a view of Nature while she lay in her simple Originals we know nothing but effects and those but by our Senses Nor can we judge of their Causes but by proportion to palpable causalities conceiving them like those within the sensible Horizon Now 't is no doubt with the considerate but that the rudiments of Nature are very unlike the grosser appearances Thus in things obvious there 's but little resemblance between the Mucous sperm and the compleated Animal The Egge is not like the oviparous production nor the corrupted muck like the creature that creeps from it There 's but little similitude betwixt a terreous humidity and plantal germinations nor do vegetable derivations ordinarily resemble their simple scminalities So then since there 's so much dissimilitude between Cause and Effect in the more palpable Phaenomena we can expect no less between them and their invisible efficients Now had our Senses never presented us with those obvious seminal principles of apparent generations we should never have suspected that a plant or animal could have proceeded from such unlikely materials much less can we conceive or determine the uncompounded initials of natural productions in the total silence of our Senses And though the Grand Secretary of Nature the miraculous Des-Cartes have here infinitely out-done all the Philosophers went before him in giving a particular and Analytical account of the Universal Fabrick yet he intends his Principles but for Hypotheses and never pretends that things are really or necessarily as he hath supposed them but that they may be admitted pertinently to solve the Phaenomena and are convenient supposals for the use of life Nor can any further account be expected from humanity but how things possibly may have been made consonantly to sensible nature but infallibly to determine how they truly were effected is proper to him only that saw them in the Chaos and fashion'd them out of that confused mass For to say the principles of Nature must needs be such as our Philosophy makes them is to set bounds to Omnipotence and to confine infinite power and wisdom to our shallow models CHAP. XXII 4 Because of the mutual dependence and concatenation of Causes we cannot know any one without knowing all Particularly declared by instances 5 All our Science comes in at our Senses their infallibility inquir'd into The Authors design in this last particular 4 ACcording to the notion of the Dogmatist we know nothing except we knew all things and he that pretends to Science affects an Omniscience For all things being linkt together by an uninterrupted chain of Causes and every single motion owning a dependence on such a Syndrome of prae-required motors we can have no true knowledge of any except we comprehended all and could distinctly pry into the whole method of Causal Concatenations Thus we cannot know the cause of any one motion in a watch unless we were acquainted with all its motive dependences and had a distinctive comprehension of the whole Mechanical frame And would we know but the most contemptible plant that grows almost all things that have a being must contribute to our knowledge for that to the perfect Science of any thing it 's necessary to know all its causes is both reasonable in its self and the sense of the Dogmatist So that to the knowledge of the poorest simple we must first know its efficient the manner and method of its efformation and the nature of the Plastick To the comprehending of which we must have a full prospect into the whole Archidoxis of Nature's secrets and the immense profundities of occult Philosophy in which we know nothing till we compleatly ken all Magnetick and Sympathetick energies and their most hidden causes And 2 if we contemplate a vegetable in its material principle and look on it as made of earth we must have the true Theory of the nature of that Element or we miserably fail of our Scientifical aspirings and while we can only say 't is cold and dry we are pitiful knowers But now to profound into the Physicks of this heterogeneous masse to discern the principles of its constitution and to discover the reason of its diversities are absolute requisites of the Science we aim at Nor can we tolerably pretend to have those without the knowledge of Minerals the causes and manner of their Concretions and among the rest the Magnet with its amazing properties This directs us to the pole and thence our disquisition is led to the whole systeme of the Heavens to the knowledge of which we must know their motions and