Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	brain_n	part_n	spirit_n	1,451	5	5.2508	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

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