possess a lesser place drive out the aire so here in this case the water at the foot of the ladder of cotton ready to climb with a very small impulse may be after some sort compared in respect of the water to air by reason of the lightness of it and consequently is forced up by the compressing of the rest of water round about it Which no faster gets up but other parts at the foot of the ladder follow the first and drive them still upwards along the tow and new ones drive the second and others the third and so forth so that with ease they climb up to the top of the filter still driving one another forwards as you may do a fine towel through a musket barrel which though it be too limber to be thrust straight through yet craming still new parts into it at length you will drive the first quite through And thus when these parts of water are got up to the top of the vessel on which the filter hangs and over it on the other side by sticking still to the tow and by their natural gravity against which nothing presses on this side the label they fall down again by little and little and by drops break again into water in the vessel set to receive them But now if you ask why it will not drop unless the end of the label that hangs be lower then the water I conceive it is because the water which is all along upon the flannen is one continued body hanging together as it were a thrid of wire and is subject to like accidents as such a continued body is Now suppose you lay wire upon the edge of the basin which the filter rests on and so make that edge the Centre to ballance it upon if the end that is outermost be heaviest it will weigh down the other otherwise not So fares it with this thrid of water if the end of it that hangs out of the pot be longer and consequently heavier then that which rises it must needs raise the other upwards and fall it self downwards Now the raising of the other implies lifting more water from the Cistern and the sliding of it self further downwards is the cause of its converting into drops So that the water in the cistern serves like the flax upon a distaff and is spun into a thrid of water still as it comes to the flannen by the drawing it up occasion'd by the overweight of the thrid on the other side of the center Which to express better by a similitude in a solid body I remember I have oftentimes seen in a Mercers shop a great heap of massy gold lace lie upon their stall and a little way above it a round smooth pin of wood over which they use to have their lace when they wind it into bottoms Now over this pin I have put one end of the lace as long as it hung no lower then the board upon which the rest of the lace did lie it stird'd not for as the weight of the loose end carried it one way so the weight of the otherside where the whole was drew it the otherway in this manner kept it in equalibrity But as soon as I drew on the hanging end to the heavier then the climbing side for no more weights then is in the air that which lies upon the board having another center then it began to roule to the ground and still drew up new parts of that which lay upon the board till all was tumbled down upon the floor In the same manner it hap'nes to the water in which the thrid of it upon the filter is to be compared fitly to that part of the lace which hung upon the pin and the whole quantity in the cistern is like the bulk of lace upon the Shopboard for as fast as the filter draws it up 't is converted into a thrid like that which is already upon the filter in like manner as the wheel converts the flax into yarn as fast as it draws it out from the distaff Our next consideration will very aptly fall upon the motion of those things which being bent leap with violence to their former figure wheras others return but a little and others stand in that ply wherin the bending hath set them For finding the reason of which effects our first reflection may be to note that a Superficies which is more long then broad contains a less floor then that whose sides are equal or nearer being equal and that of those surfaces whose lines and angles are all equal that which hath most sides and angles contains still the greater floor Whence it is that Mathematicians conclude a circle to be the most capacious of all figures and what they say of lines in respect of a superficies the same with proportion they say of surfaces in respect of the body contained And accordingly we see by consequence that in the making a bag of a long napkin if the napkin be sew'd together longwise it holds a great deal less then if it be sewd together broadwise By this we see plainly that if any body in a thick and short figure be forced into a thinner which by becoming thinner must likewise become either longer or broader for what it loses one way it must get another then that superficies must needs be stretched which in our case is a Physical outside or material part of a solid body not a Mathematical consideration of an indivisible Entity We see also that this change of figures happens in the bending of all those bodies wherof we are now enquiring the reason why some of them restore themselves to their original figures and others stand as they are bent Then to begin with the latter sort we find that they are of a moist nature as among metalls lead and tin and among other bodies those â—which we account soft And we may determine that this effect proceeds partly from the humidity of the body that stands bent and partly from a driness peculiar to it that comprehends and fixes the humidity of it For by the first they are render'd capable of being driven into any figure which nature or art desires and by the second they are preserv'd from having their gravity put them out of what figure they have once receiv'd But because these two conditions are common to all solid bodies we may conclude that if no other circumstance concur'd the effect arising out of them would likewise be common to all such and therfore where we find it otherwise we must seek further for a cause of that transgression As for example if you bend the bodies of young trees or the branches of others they will return to their due figure 'T is true they will somtimes lean towards that way they have been bent as may be seen even in great trees after violent tempests and generally the heads of trees the ears of corn and the grown hedg rows will all bend one way
by great noises 4. That solid bodies may convey the motion of the air or sound to the Organe of hearing 5. Where the motion is interrupted there is no sound 6. That not only the motion of the air but all other motions coming to our ears make sound 7. How one sense may supply the want of another 8. Of one who could discern sounds of words with his eyes 9. Divers reasons to prove sound to be nothing else but a motion of some real body CHAP XXIX Of Sight and Colours 1. That colours are nothing but light mingled with darkness or the disposition of a bodies superficies apt to reflect light so mingled 2. Concerning the disposition of those bodies which produce white or black colours 3. The former doctrine confirmed by Aristotles authority reason and experience 4. How the diversity of colours do follow out of various degrees of rarity and density 5. Why some bodies are diaphanous others opacous 6. The former doctrine of colours confirmed by the generation of white and black in bodies CHAP. XXX Of luminous or apparent Colours 1. Apparitions of colours through a prism or trianglar glass are of two sorts 2. The several parts of the object make several angles at their entrance into the prism 3. The reason why sometimes the same object appears through the prism in two places and in one place more lively in the other place more dim 4. The reason of the various 〈◊〉 louâ— that appear in looking thâ—rough a prism 5. The reason why the prism in one position may make the colours appear quite contrary to what they did when it was in another position 6. The reason of the various colours in general by pure light passing through a prism 7. Upon what side every colour appears that is made by pure light passing through a prism CHAP. XXXI The causes of certain appearances in luminous Colours with a conclusion of the discourse touching the Senses and the Sensible Qualities 1. The reason of each several colour in particular caused by light passing through a prism 2. A difficult problem resolved touching the Prism 3. Of the rainbow and how by the colour of any body we may know the composition of the body it self 4. That all the sensible qualities are real bodies resulting out of several mixtures of rarity and density 5. Why the senses are onely five in number with a conclusion of all the former doctrine concerning them CHAP. XXXII Of Sensation or the motion wherby sense is properly exercised 1. Monsieur des Cartes his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. The Authours opinion touching sensation 3. Reasons to perswade the Authours opinion 4. That vital spirits are the immediate instruments of sensation by conveying sensible qualities to the brain 5. How sound is convey'd to the brain by vital spirits 6. How colours are convey'd to the brain by vital spirits 7. Reasons against Monsieur des Cartes his opinion 8. That the symptomes of the palsy do no way confirm Monsieur des Cartes his opinion 9. That Monsieur des Cartes his opinion cannot give a good account how things are conserv'd in the memory CHAP. XXXIII Of Memosy 1. How things are conserv'd in the memory 2. How things conserv'd in the memory are brought back into the phantasie 3. A confirmation of the former doctrine 4. How things renew'd in the phantasie return with the same circumstances that they had at first 5. How the memory of things past is lost or confounded and â—en it is repaired again CHAP. XXXIV Of Voluntary motion Natural faculties and Passions 1. Of what matter the brain is composed 2. What is voluntary motion 3. What those powers are which are called natural faculties 4. How the attractive and secretive faculties work 5. Concerning the concoctive faculty 6. Concerning the retentive and expulsive faculties 7. Concerning expulsion made by Physick 8. How the brain is moved to work voluntary motion 9. Why pleasing objects do dilate the spirits and displeasing ones contract them 10. Concerning the five senses for what use and end they are CHAP. XXXV Of the material instrument of Knowledge and Passion of the several effects of passion of pain and pleasure and how the vital spirits are sent from the brain into the intended parts of the body without mistaking their way 1. That Septum Lucidum is the seat of the phansie 2. What causes us to remember not only the object it self but also that we have thought of it before 3. How the motions of the phantasie are derived to the heart 4. Of pain and pleasure 5. Of Passion 6. Of several pulses caused by passions 7. Of several other effects caused naturally in the body by passions 8. Of the Diaphragma 9. Concerning pain and pleasure caused by the memory of things past 10. How so small bodies as atomes are can cause so great motions in the heart 11. How the vital spirits sent from the brain do run to the intended part of the body without mistake 12. How men are blinded by passion CHAP. XXXVI Of some actions of Beasts that seem to be formal acts of reason as doubting resolving inventing 1. The order and connexion of the subsequent Chapters 2. From whence proceeds the doubting of beasts 3. Concerning the invention of Foxes and other beasts 4. Of Foxes that catch Hens by lying under their roost and by gazing upon them 5. From whence proceeds the foxes intention to rid himself of fleas 6. An explication of two other inventions of Foxes 7. Concerning Montagu's argument to prove that Dogs make Syllogismes 8. A declaration how some tricks are performedly Foxes which which seem to argue discourse 9. Of the Jaccatray's invention in calling Beasts to himself 10. Of the Jaccals design in serving the Lion 11. Of several inventions of fishes 12. A discovery of divers thing done by Hares which seem to argue discourse 13. Of a Fox reported to have weighed a Goose before he would venture with it over a River and of Fabulous stories in common 14. Of the several cryings and tones of beasts with a refutation of those Authors who maintain them to have compleat languages CHAP. XXXVII Of the Docility of some irrational Animals and of certain continuate actions of a long tract of time so orderly performed by them that they seem to argue knowledge in them 1. How Hawks and other creatures are taught to do what they are brought up to 2. Of the Baboon that played on a Guittar 3. Of the teaching of Elephants other beasts to do divers tricks 4. Of the orderly train of actions performed by beasts in breeding their young ones CHAP. XXXVIII Of Prescience of future events Providences the knowing of things never seen before and such other actions observed in some living Creatures which seem to be even above the reason that is in man himself 1. Why Beasts are afraid of men 2. How some qualities caused at first by change in beasts may pass by generation to the whole off spring 3. How the Parents phantasie
uppermost stone and exactly in the middle of it Then by that ring pull it up perpendicularly and steadily and the undermost will follow sticking fast to the overmost and though they were not very perfectly polished yet the nethermost would follow for a while if the ring be suddenly plucked up but then it will soon fall down again Now this plainly shews that the cause of their sticking so strongly together when both the stones are very well polished is for that nothing can well enter between them to part them and so 't is reduced to the shortness of the air betwixt them which not being capable of so great an expansion nor admitting to be divided thick-ways so much as is necessary to fill the first growing distance between the two stones till new air finds a course thither that so the swelling of the one may hinder vacuity till the other come into the rescue the two stones must needs stick together to certain limits which limits will depend of the proportion that is between the weight and the continuity of the nethermost stone And when we have examin'd this we shall understand in what sense it is meant that Nature abhors from Vacuity and what means she uses to avoid it For to put it as an enemy that nature fights against or to discourse of effects that would follow from it in case it were admitted is a great mistake and a lost labour seeing it is nothing and therfore can do nothing but is meerly a form of expression to declare in short nothing else but that it is a contradiction or implication in terms and an impossibility in nature for Vacuity to have or be supposed to have a Being Thus then since in our case after we have cast all about we can pitch upon nothing to be consider'd but that the two stones touch one another and that they are weighty we must apply our selvs only to reflect upon the affects proceeding from these two causes their contiguity and their heaviness and we shall find that as the one of them namely the weight hinders the undermost from following the uppermost so contiguity obliges it to that course and according as the one overcoms the other so will this action be continued or interrupted Now that contiguity of substances makes one follow another is evident by what our Masters in Metaphysicks teach us when they shew that without this affect no motion at all could be made in the world nor any reason given for those motions we daily see For since the nature of quantity is such that whenever there is nothing between two parts of it they must needs touch and adhere and joyn to one another for how should they be kept asunder when there is nothing between them to to part them if you pull one part away either some new substance must come to be close to that which removes or else the other which was formerly close to it must still be close to it and so follow it for if nothing come between it is still close to it Thus then it being necessary that somthing must be joyn'd close to every thing Vacuity which is nothing is excluded from having any being in nature And when we say that one body must follow another to avoid vacuity the meaning is that under the necessity of a contradiction they must follow one another and that they cannot do otherwise For it would be a contradiction to say that nothing were between two things and yet that they are not joyn'd close to one another and therfore if you should say it you would in other words say they are close together and they are not close together In like manner to say that Vacuity is any where is a pure contradiction for Vacuity being nothing has no Being at all and yet by those words it is said to be in such a place so that they affirm it to be and not to be at the same time But now let us examine if there be no means to avoid this contradiction and vacuity other then by the adhesion following of one body upon the motion of another that is closely joyn'd to it and every where contiguous For sense is not easily quieted with such Metaphysical contemplations that seem to repugn against her dictamens and therefore for her satisfaction we can do no less then give her leave to range about and cast all waies in hope of finding some one that may better content her which when she finds that she cannot she will the less repine to yield her assent to the rigorous sequels and proofs of reason In this difficulty then after turning on every side I for my part can discern no pretence of probability in any other means but pulling down the lower stone by one corner that so there may be a gaping between the two stones to let in air by little and little And in this case you may say that by the intervention of air Vacuity is hinder'd and yet the lower stone is left at liberty to follow its own natural inclination and be govern'd by its weight But indeed if you consider the matter well you will find that the doing this requires a much greater force then to have the lower stone follow the upper for it cannot gape in a straight line to let in air since in that position it must open at the bottom where the angle is made at the same time that it opens at the mouth and then air requiring time to pass from the edges to the bottom it must in the mean while fal into the contradiction of Vacuity So that if it should open to let in air the stone to compass that effect must bend in such sort as wood doth when a wedg is put into it to cleave it Judge then what force it must be that should make hard marble of a great thickness bend like a wand and whether it would not rather break and slide off then do so you will allow that a much less will raise up the lower stone together with the uppermost It must then of necessity fall out that it will follow it if it be moved perpendicularly upwards And the like effect will be though it should be raised at oblique angles so that the lower-most edge do rest all the way upon somthing that may hinder the inferiour stone from sliding aside from the uppermost And this is the very case of all those other experiments of art and nature which we have mention'd above for the reason holds as well in water and liquide things as in solid bodies till the weight of the liquid body overcome's the continuity of it for then the thrid breaks and it will ascend no higher Which height Galileo tells us from the workmen in the Arsenal of Venice is 40 foot if the water be drawn up in a close pipe in which the advantage of the sides helps the ascent But others say that the invention is inlarged and that water
concerning the motion of the heart 5. The motion of the heart depends originally of its fibers irrigated by bloud 6. An objection answer'd against the former doctrine 7. The Circulation of the Bloud and other effects that follow the motions of the heart 8. Of Nutrition 9. Of Argumentation 10. Of Death and Sickness 1. The connxeion of the subsequent chapters with the precedent 2. Of the Senses and sensible qualities in general And of the end for which they serve 3. Of the sense of Touching and that both it and its qualities are bodies 4. Of the Tast and its qualities that they are bodies 5. That the Smell and its qualities are real bodies 6. Of the conformity betwixt the two Senses of Smelling and Tasting 7. The reason why the sense of Smelling is not so perfect in man as in beasts with a wonderful history of a man who could wind a scent as a well as any beast 1. Of the sense of Hearing and that Sound is purely motion 2. Of divers arts belonging to the sense of Hearing all which confirm that Sound is nothing but motion 3. To same is confirm'd by the effects caused by great noises 4. That solid bodies may convey the motion of the ayr or sound to the organ of hearing 5. Where the motion is interrupted there is no sound 6. That not only the motion of the air but all other motions coming to our ears make sounds 7. How own sense may supply the want of an other 4. Of one who could discern sounds of words with his eyes 9. Divers reasons to prove sound to be nothing else but a motion of some real body 1. That Colours are nothing but light mingled with darkness or the disposition of a bodies superficies apt to reflect light so mingled 2. Concerning the disposition of those bodies which produce white or black coulours 3. The former doctrine confirm'd by Aristotles authority reason experience 4. How the diversity of colours follows out of various degrees of rarity and density 5. Why some bodies are Diaphanous others Opacous 6. The former doctrine of colours confirm'd by the generation of white and black in bodies 1. Apparitions of colours through a Prism or triangular-glass are of two sorts 2. The several parts of the object make several angles at their entrance into the Prism 6 The reason why somtimes the same object appears through the Prism in two places and in one place mor lively in the other place more dim 4 The reason of the various colours that appear in looking through a Prism 5. The reason why the Prism in one position may make the colours appear quite contrary to what they did when it was in another position 6. The reason of the various colours in general by pure light passing through a Prism 7. Upon what side every colour appears this is made by pure light passing through a Prism 1. The reason of each several colour in particular caused by light passing through a Prism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â—ing the Prism 3 Of the Rainbow and how by the colour of any body we may know the composition of the body it self 4 That all the Sensible Qualities are real bodies resulting out of several mixtures of Rarity and Density 5 Why the Senses are only Five in number with a conclusion of all the former doctrine concerning them 1. Monsir des Cartes his opinion touching Sensation 2. The Authors opinion touching sensation 3. Reasons to perswade the Authors opinion 4. That Vital Spirits are the immediate instruments of Sensation by conveying sensible qualities to the brain 5. How found is convey'd to the brain by vital spirits 6. How colours are convey'd to the brain by Vital Spirits 7. Reasons against Monsir des Cartes his opinion 8. That the symptome of the Palsie do no way confirm Monsir des Cartes his opinion 9. That Mâ—asir des Cartes his opinion cannot give a good account how things are conserv'd in the Memory 1. How things are conserv'd in the Memory 2. How things conserv'd in the Memory are brought back into the Phantasie 3. A Confirmation of the former doctrine 4. How things renew'd in the fantasie return with the same circumstances they had at first 5 How the memory of things past is lost or confounded and how it is repair'd again 1. Of what matter the brrain is composed 2. What is voluntary motion 3. What those powers are which are called Natural Faculties 4. How the Attractive and Secretive faculties work 5. Concerning the concoctive faculty 6. Concerning the Retentive and Expulsive faculties 7. Concerning expulsion made by Physick 9. How the brain is moved to work Voluntary motion 9. Why pleasing objects dilate the spirits and displeasing ones contract them 10. Concerning the Five Senses of what Use and End they are 1. That 〈◊〉 Luc dum is the seat of the fansie 2. What causes us to remember not only the object it self but also that we have thought of it before 3. How the motions of the fantasie are derived to the heart 4. Of Pain and Pleasure 5. Of Passion 6. Of several Pulses caused by Passion 7. Of several other effects caused naturally in the body by passions 8. Of the Diaphragma 9. Concerning pain and pleasure caused by the memory of things past 10. How so small bodies as atomes are can cause so great motions in the heart How the vital spirits sent from thebrain run to the intended part of the body without mistake 1. How men are blinded by passion 1. The order and connexion of the subsequent Chapters 2. From whence proceeds the doubting of beasts 3. Concerning the invention of Foxes and other beast 4. Of Foxes that catch hens by lying under their roost and by gazing upon them 5. From whence proceeds the Foxes invention to rid himself of Flea 6. An explication of two other inventions of Foxes 7. Concerning Montagues argument to prove that Dogs make syllogisms 8. A declaration how some tricks are perform'd by Foxes which seem to argue discourse 9. Of the Jaccatrays invention in calling beasts to himself 10. Of the Jaccils designe in serviâ—g the Lion 11. Of several intentions of Fishes 12 A discovery of divers things done by Hares which seem to argue discourse 13. Of a Fox reported to have weighâ— a Goose before he would venture with it over a River and of fabulous stories in common 14. Of the several Cryings and Tones of Beasts with a refutation of those Authors who maintain them to have compleat Languages 1. How Hawks and other creatures are taught to do what they are brought up to 2. Of the Baboon that plaid on a Guittar 3 Of the teaching of Elephants and other beasts to do divers tricks 4. Of the orderly â—ain of actions perrformd by 〈◊〉 in breeding their young ones 1. Why beasts are afrad of men 2. How some qualities caus'd at first by chance in beasts may pass by generation to the whole off-spring 3. How the parents fantasy oftentimes works strange
neither great nor little and consequently the whole machine raised upon that supposition must be ruinous His argument is to this purpose What is nothing cannot have parts but vacuum is nothing because as the Adversaries conceive it vacuum is the want of a corporeal substance in an inclosing body within whose sides nothing is whereas a certain body might be contain'd within them as if in a pail or bowl of a gallon there were neither milk nor water nor air nor any other body whatever therefore vacuum cannot have parts Yet those who admit it put it expresly for a Space which essentially includes Parts and thus they put two contradictories nothing and parts that is parts and no parts or something and nothing in the same proposition And this I conceive to be absolutely unavoidable For these reasons therfore I must entreat my Readers favour that he will allow me to touch upon Metaphysicks a little more than I desire or intended but it shall be no otherwise then as is said of the Dogs by the River Nilus side who being thirsty lap hastily of the water only to serve their necessity as they run along the shore Thus then remembring how we determin'd that Quantity is Divisibility it follows that if besides Quantity there be a Substance or Thing which is divisible that Thing if it be condistinguish'd from its Quantity or Divisibility must of it self be indivisible or to speak more properly it must be not divisible Put then such Substance to be capable of the Quantity of the whole world or Universe and consequently you put it of it self indifferent to all and to any part of Quantity for in it by reason of the negation of Divisibility there is no variety of parts wherof one should be the subject of one part of Quantity or another of another or that one should be a capacity of more another of â—ess This then being so we have the ground of more or less Proportion between Substance and Quantity for if the whole Quantity of the Universe be put into it the proportion of Quantity â—o the capacity of that substance will be greater than if but half â—hat quantity were imbibed in the same substance And because proportion changes on both sides by the single change of only one side it follows that in the latter the proportion of that Substance to its Quantity is greater and that in the former 't is less though the Substance in it self be indivisible What we have said thus in abstract will sink more easily into us if we apply it to some particular bodies here among us in which we see a difference of Rarity and Density as to air water gold or the like and examine if the effects that happen to them do follow out of this disproportion between substance and Quantity For example let us conceive that all the quantity of the world were in one uniform substance then the whole universe would be of one and the same degree of Rarity and Density let that degree be the degree of water it will then follow that in what part soever there happens to be a change from this degree that part will not have that proportion of quantity to its substance which the quantity of the whole world had to the presupposed uniformsubstance But if it happens to have the degree of rarity which is in the air it will then have more quantity in proportion to its substance then would be due to it according to the presupposed proportion of the quantity of the universe to the aforesaid uniform substance which in this case is as it were the standard to try all other proportions by And contrariwise if it happens to have the degree of Density which is found in earth or in gold then it will have less quantity in proportion to its substance then would be due to it according to the aforesaid proportion or common standard Now to proceed from hence with examining the effects which result out of this compounding of Quantity with substance we may first consider that the Definitions which Aristotle has given us of Rarity and Density are the same we drive at He tells us that that body is rare whose quantity is more and its substance less that contrariwise dense where the substance is more and the quantity less Now if we look into the proprieties of the bodies we have named or of any others we shall see them all follow clearly out of these definitions For first that one is more diffused another more compacted such diffusion and compaction seem to be the very natures of Rarity and Density supposing them to be such as we have defined them to be since substance is more diffused by having more parts or by being in more parts and is more compacted by the contrary And then that rare bodies are more divisible then dense ones you see is coincident into the same conceit with their diffusion and compaction And from hence again it follows that they are more easily both divided into great and by the force of natural Agents divisible into lesser parts for both these that is facility of being divided and easie divisibility into lesser parts are contain'd in being more divisible or in more enjoying the effect of Quantity which is divisibility From this again follows that in rare bodies there is less resistance to the motion of another body through it than in dense ones and therefore a like force passes more easily through the one than through the other Again rare bodies are more penetrative and active than dense ones because being by their overproportion of quantity easily divisible into small parts they can run into every little pore and so incorporate themselvs better into other bodies than more dense ones can Light bodies likewise must be rarer because most divisible if other circumstances concur equally Thus you see decypher'd to your hand the first division of bodies flowing from Quantity as it is ordain'd to Substance for the composition of a Body for since the definition of a Body is a thing which hath parts and quantity is that by which it hath parts and the first propriety of quantity is to be bigger or lesse and consequently the first differences of having parts are to have bigger or lesse more or fewer what division of a Body can be more simple more plain or more immediate than to divide it by its Quantity as making it have bigger or less more or fewer parts in proportion to its Substance Neither can I justly be blamed for touching thus on Metaphysicks to explicate the nature of these two kinds of Bodies for Metaphysicks being the Science above Physicks it belongs to her to declare the principles of Physicks of which these we have now in hand are the very first step But much more if we consider that the composition of quantity with substance is purely Metaphysical we must necessarily allow the inquiry into the nature of Rarity and Density to be wholly Metaphysical since
is The better to apprehend how much this faint resemblance of flame upon the paper maketh for our purpose let us turn the leaf and imagine in our thoughts after what fashion that fire which is in the flame of a little candle would appear to us if it were dilated and stretch'd out to the utmost extent that excess of rarity can bring it to Suppose that so much flame as would fill a cone of two inches height and half an inch Diameter should suffer so great an expansion as to replenish with his light body a large chamber and then what can we imagine it would seem to be How would the continual driving it into a thinner substance as it streams in a perpetual flood from the flame seem to play upon the paper And then judg whether it be likely to be a body or no when our discourse suggests to us that if it be a body those very appearances must follow which our eyes give us evidence are so in effect If gold beaten into so airy a thinness as we see gilders use remains still Gold notwithstanding the wonderfull expansion of it why shall we not allow that fire dilated to its utmost period shall still remain fire though extreamly rarified beyond what it was We know that fire is the rarest and the subtilest substance that nature hath made among bodies and we know likewise that it is ingendred by the destroying and feeding upon some other more grosse body let us then calculate when the oyl or tallow or wax of a candle or the bulk of a faggot or billet is dilated and rarified to the degree of fire how vast a place must it take up To this let us add what Aristotle teaches us that fire is not like a standing pool which continues full with the same water and as it has no waste so has it no supply but it is a fluent and brook-like current Which also we may learn out of the perpetual nutriment it requires for a new part of fewel being converted into a new part of fire as we may observe in the little atomes of Oyl or melted wax that continually ascend apace up the wieke of a burning candle or lamp of necessity the former must be gone to make room for the latter and so a new part of the river is continually flowing Now then this perpetual flux of fire being made of a grosse body that so rarified will take up such a vast room if it die not at the instant of its birth but have some time to subsist be it never so short it must needs run some distance from the fountain whence it springs Which if it do you need not wonder that there should be so great an extent of fire as is requisite to fill all that space which light replenishes nor that it should be still supplyed with new as fast as the cold of the aire kills it For considering that flame is a much grosser substance then grosse fire by reason of the mixture with it of that viscous oyly matter which being drawn out of the wood and candle serves for fewel to the fire and is by little and little converted into it and withal reflecting on the nature and motion of fire which is to dilate it self extreamly and to fly all about from the center to the circumference you cannot choose but conceive that the pure fire strugling to break away from the oyly fewel which is still turning into new fire doth at length free his wings from that birdlime and then flies abroad with extream swiftness swels and dilates it self to a huge bulk now that it has gotten liberty and so fills a vast room but remains still fire till it die Which it no sooner doth but it is still supply'd with new streams of it that are continually strain'd as it were squees'd out of the thick flame which imprison'd and kept it within it till growing fuller of fire then it could contain by reason of the continual attenuating the oyly parts of it and converting them into fire it gives liberty to those parts of fire that are next the superficies to fly whither their nature will carry them And thus discourse would inform a Blind man after he has well reflected on the nature of fire how it must needs fill a mighty extent of place though it have but a narrow beginning at its spring head and that there by reason of the condensation of it and mixture with a grosser body it must needs burn other bodies but that when it is freed from such mixture and suffers an extream expansion it cannot have force to burn but may have means to express it self to be there present by some operation of it upon some body that is refin'd and subtilized enough to perceive it And this operation a seeing man will tell you is done upon his eyes whose fitness to receive impression from so subtile an Agent Anatomists will teach you And I remember how a blind Schoolmaster that I kept in my house to teach my children who had extream subtile spirits and a great tenderness through his whole body and met with few distractions to hinder him from observing any impression never so nicely made upon him used often to tell me that he felt it very perceptibly in several parts of his body but especially in his brain But to settle us more firmly in the perswasion of light 's being a body and consequently fire let us consider that the properties of a body are perpetually incident to light look what rules a ball will keep in its rebounds the same doth light in its reflections and the same demonstration alike convinces the one and the other Besides light is broken like a body as when 't is snapped in pieces by a tougher body it is gather'd together in a little room by looking or burning glasses as water is by ordering the gutters of a house so as to bring into one cistern all that rains dispersedly upon the whole roof It is sever'd and dispers'd by other glasses and is to be wrought upon and cast hither and thither at pleasure all by the rule of other bodies And what is done in light the same will likewise be done in heat in cold in wind and in sound And the very same instruments that are made for light will work their effects in all these others if they be duly managed So that certainly were it not for the authority of Aristotle and his learned followers that presses us on the one side and for the seemingness of those reasons we have already mention'd which perswades us on the other side our very eyes would carry us by stream into this consent that light is no other thing but the nature and substance of fire spread far and wide and freed from the mixture of all other gross bodies Which will appear yet more evident in the solutions of the oppositions we have brought against our own opinion for in them there will
by descending so that as long as it boyls 't is in a perpetual confused motion up and down Now having formerly concluded that fire is light and light is fire it cannot be doubted but that the Sun serves instead of fire to our Globe of Earth and water which may be fitly compared to the boyling pot and all the day long draws vapours from those bodies that his beams strike upon For he shooting his little darts of fire in multitudes and in continued streams from his own center against the Python the earth we live on they there overtake one another and cause some degrees of heat as far as they sink in But not being able by reason of their great expansion in their long journey to convert it into their own nature and set it on fire which requires a high degree of condensation of the beams they but pierce and divide it very subtilly and cut some of the outwardparts of it into extreme little atomes To which sticking very close and being in a manner incorporated with them by reason of the moisture that is in them they in their rebound back from the earth carry them along with them like a ball that struck against a moist wall in its return from it brings back some of the mortar sticking upon it For the distance of the Earth from the Sun is not the utmost period of these nimble bodie 's flight so that when by this solid body they are stop'd in their course forwards on they leap back from it and carry some little parts of it with them som of them a farther some of them a shorter journey according to their littleness and rarity make them fit to ascend As is manifest by the consent of all Authors that write of the Regions of the Air who determine the Lower Region to reach as far as the reflection of the Sun and conclude this Region to be very hot For if we mark how the heat of fire is greatest when it is incorporated in some dense body as in Iron or in Sea-coal we shall easily conceive that the heat of this Region proceeds mainly out of the incorporation of light with those little bodies which stick to it in its reflection And experience testifies the same both in our soultry days which we see are of a gross temper and ordinarily go before rain as also in the hot Springs of extreme cold countrys where the first heats are unsufferable which proceed out of the resolution of humidity congeal'd in hot winds which the Spaniards call Bochornos from Boca de horno by allusion to the breathing stream of an Oven when it is open'd which manifestly shew that the heat of the Sun is incorporated in the little bodies which compose the steam of that wind And by the principles we have already laid the same would be evident though we had no experience to instruct us for seeing that the body of fire is dry the wet parts which are easiest resolved by fire must needs stick to them and accompany them in their return from the earth Now whiles these ascend the air must needs cause others that are of a grosser complexion to descend as fast to make room for the former and to fill the places they left that there may be no vacuity in nature And to find what parts they are and from whence they come that succeed in the room of light and atomes glew'd together that thus ascend we may take a hint from the Maxime of the Opticks that Light reflecting makes equal angles whence supposing the Superficies of the earth to be circular it will follow that a Perpendicular to the center passes just in the middle between the two rayes the incident and the reflected Wherefore the air between these two rayes and such bodies as are in it being equally pressed on both sides those bodies which are just in the middle are nearest and likeliest to succeed immediately in the room of the light and atomes which ascend from the Superficies of the earth and their motion to that point is upon the Perpendicular Hence 't is evident that the Air and all such bodies as descend to supply the place of light and atomes which ascend from the Earth descend perpendicularly towards the center of the earth And again such bodies as by the force of light being cut from the earth or water do not ascend in form of light but incorporate a hidden light and heat within them and thereby are rarer then these descending bodies must of necessity be lifted up by the descent of those denser bodies that go downwards because they by reason of their density are moved with a greater force And this lifting up must be in a perpendicular line because the others descending on all sides perpendicularly must needs raise those that are between them equally from all sides that is perpendicularly from the center of the earth And thus we see a motion set on foot of some bodies continually descending and others continually ascending all in perpendicular lines excepting those which follow the course of lights reflexion Again as soon as the declining Sun grows weaker or leaves our Horizon and his beams vanishing leave the little hors-men which rode upon them to their own temper and nature from whence they forced them they finding themselvs surrounded by a smart descending stream tumble down again in the night as fast as in the day they were carried up and crowding into their former habitations exclude those they find had usurped them in their absence And thus all bodies within reach of the Suns power but especially our air are in perpetual motion the more rarified ones ascending and the dense ones descending Now then because no bodies wherever they be as we have already shew'd have any inclination to move towards a particular place otherwise then as they are directed and impel'd by extrinsecal Agents let us suppose that a body were placed at liberty in the open air And then casting whether it would be moved from the place we suppose it in and which way it would be moved we shall find it must of necessity happen that it shall descend and fall down till it meet with some other gross body to stay and support it For though of it self it would move no way yet if we find that any other body strikes efficaciously enough upon it we cannot doubt but it will move that way which the striking body impels it Now it is strucken upon on both sides above and below by the ascending and the descending atoms the rare ones striking upon the bottome of it and driving it upwards and the denser ones pressing upon the top of it and bearing it downwards But if you compare the the impressions the denser atoms make with those that proceed from the rare ones 't is evident the dense ones must be the more powerful and therfore will assuredly determine the motion of the body in the air that way they go which is
same point of incidence in a shorter line and a greater angle than another does In both these wayes 't is apparent that a body composed of greater parts and greater pores exceeds bodies of the opposite kind for by reason that in the first kind more light may beat against one part a body in which that happens will wake an appearance from a further part of its superficies wheras in a body of the other sort the light that beats against one of the little parts of it will be so little as 't will presently vanish Again because in the first the part at the incidence is greater the surface from which the reflection is made inwards has more of a plain and straight superficies and consequently reflects at a greater angle than that whose superficies hath more of inclining But we must not pass from this question without looking a little into the nature of those bodies in which refraction is made for if they as well as the immediate causes of refraction likewise favour us it will not a little advance the certainty of our determination To this purpose we may call to mind how experience shews us that great refractions are made in smoke and mists and glasses and thick-bodied waters and Monsir des Cartes adds certain Oyls and Spirits or strong Waters Now most of these we see are composed of little consistent bodies swimming in another liquid body As is plain in smoke and mists for the little bubbles which rise in the water before they get out of it and that are smoke when they get into the air assure us that smoke is nothing else but a company of little round bodies swimming in the air and the round consistence of water upon herbs leavs twigs in a rind or dew gives us also to understand that a Mist is likewise a company of little round bodies that sometimes stand sometimes float in the air as the wind drives them Our very eyes bear witness to us that the thicker sort of waters are full of little bodies which is the cause of their not being clear As for Glass the blowing of it convinces that the little darts of fire which pierce it every way do naturally in the melting of it convert it into little round hollow bodies which in their cooling must settle into parts of the like figure Then for Chrystal and other transparent stones which are found in cold places it cannot be otherwise but that the nature of cold piercing into the main body and contracting every little part in it self this contraction must needs leave vacant pores between part and part And that such transparent stones as are made by heat have the like effect and property may be judg'd out of what we see in Bricks and Tiles which are left full of holes by the operation of the fire And I have seen in bones that have lain a long time in the Sun a multitude of sensible little pores close to one another as if they had been formerly stack all over with subtile sharp needles as close as they could be thrust in by one another The Chymical Oyles and Spirits which Monsir des Cartes speaks of are likely to be of the same composition since such use to be extracted by violent fires for a violent fire is made by the conjunction of many rayes together and that must needs cause great pores in the body it works on and the sticking nature of these spirits is capable of conserving them Out of all these observations it follows that the bodies in which greatest refractions happen are compounded as we have said of great parts and great pores and therfore by only taking light to be such a body as we have described it where we treated of its nature 't is evident the effect we have exprest must necessarily follow by way of reflection and refraction is nothing else but a certain kind of reflection Which last assertion is likewise convinced out of this that the same effects proceed from reflection as from refraction for by reflection a thing may be seen greater than it is in a different place from the true one where it is colours may be made by reflection as also gloating light and fire likewise and peradventure all other effects which are caused by refraction may as well as these be perform'd by reflection And therfore 't is evident they must be of the same nature since children are the resemblances of their parents CHAP. XIV Of the composition qualities and generation of mixed bodies HAving now declar'd the vertues by which Fire and Earth work upon one another and upon the rest of the Elements which is by Light and the motions we have discours'd of Our task shall be in this Chapter first to observe what will result out of such action of theirs and next to search into the ways and manner of compassing and performing it Which latter we shall the more easily attain to when we first know the end that their operation levels at In this pursuit we shall find that the effect of the Elements combinations by means of the motions that happen among them is a long pedegree of compounded qualities and bodies wherein the first combinations like marriages are the breeders of the next more-composed substances and they again are the parents of others in greater variety and so are multiplied without end for the further this work proceeds the more subjects it makes for new business of the like kind To descend in particular to all these is impossible And to look further then the general heads of them were superfluous and troublesome in this discourse wherin I aim only at shewing what sorts of things in common may be done by Bodies that if hereafter we meet with things of another nature and strain we may be sure they are not the off-spring of bodies and quantity which is the main scope of what I have design'd here And to do this with confidence certainty requires of necessity this leisurely and orderly proceeding we have hitherto used and shall continue to the end For walking thus softly we have always one foot upon the ground so as the other may be sure of firm footing before it settle Wheras they that for more hast will leap over rugged passages and broken ground when both their feet are in the air cannot help themselvs but must light as chance throws them To this purpose then we may consider that the qualities of bodies in common are of three sorts For they are belonging either to the Constitution of a compounded body or else to the Operation of it and the Operation of a body is of two kinds one upon Other Bodies the other upon Sense The last of these three sorts of qualities shall be handled in a peculiar Chapter by themselvs Those of the second sort wherby they work upon Other bodies have been partly declar'd in the former chapters and will be further discours'd of in the rest of this first
if afterwards by any accident there comes a great compression they force them to lose their natural rarity and to become some other Element Thus it fares with fire both in acting and suffering And the same course we have in both these regards expressed of it passes likewise in the rest of the Elements to the proportion of their contrarieties Hence it follows that when fire meets with humidity in any body it divides and subtilises it and disperses it gently and in a kind of equal manner through the whole body it is in if the operation of it be a natural and a gentle one and so drives it into other parts which at the same time it prepares to receive it by subtilising likewise those parts And thus moderate fire makes humour in very smal parts to incorporate it self in an even or uninform manner with the dry parts it meets with which being done whether the heat afterwards continues or the cold succeeds in lieu of it the effect must of necessity be that the body thus compos'd be bound up and fastn'd more or less according to the proportion of the Matter 't is made of of the Agents that work upon it and of the Time they employ about it This is every day seen in the ripening of fruits and in other frequent works as well of art as of nature and is so obvious and sensible to any reasonable observation that t is needless to enlarge my self much upon this subject Only it will not be amiss for examples sake to consider the progress of it in the composing or augmenting of metals or earths of divers sorts First heat as we have said draws humour out of all the bodies it works on then if the extracted humour be in quantity and the steams of it happen to come together in some hollow place fit to assemble them into greater parts they are condens'd and fall down in a liquid and running body These streams being corporified the body resulting out of them makes it self in the earth a channel to run in and if there be any loose parts in the channel they mingle themselvs with the running liquor and though there be none such yet in time liquor it self loosens the channel all about and imbibes into its own substance the parts it raises And thus all of them compacted together roll along till they tumble into some low place out of which they cannot so easily get to wander further When they are thus settled they the more easily receive into them and retain such heat as is every where to be met withal because it is diffused more or less through the earth This heat if it be sufficient digests it into a solid body the temper of cold likewise concurring in its measure to this effect And according to the variety of the substances wherof the first liquor was made and which it afterwards drew along with it the body that results out of them is diversifyed In confirmation of all which they that deal in Mines tell us they use to find metalls oftentimes mingled with stones as also coagulated juyces with both and earths of divers natures with all three and they with it and one with another among themselvs And that sometimes they find the mines not yet consolidated and digested throughly into metal when by their experience knowing after how many years they will be ripe they shut them up again till then Now if the hollow place wherin the body stay'd which at first was liquid and rolling be not at once filled by it but it takes up only part of it and the same liquor continues afterwards to flow thither then this body is augmented and groweth bigger and bigger And though the liquors should come at several times yet they become not therfore two several bodies but both grow into one body for the wet parts of the adventititious liquor mollifie the sides of the body already baked and both of them being of a like temper and cognation they easily stick and grow together Out of this discourse it follows evidently that in all sorts of compounded bodies whatever there must of necessity be actually comprised sundry parts of divers natures for otherwise they would be but so many pure degrees of rarity and density that is they would be but so many pure Elements and each of them have but one determinate virtue or operation CHAP. XV. Of the dissolution of mixed bodies THus much for composition of Bodies Their dissolution is made three wayes either by fire or by water or by some outward violence We will begin with examining how this last is done To which end we may consider that the unity of any body consisting in the connexion of its parts 't is evident the force of motion if it be exercised upon them must of necessity separate them as we see inbreaking cutting filing drawing asunder and the like All these motions because they are done by gross bodies require great parts to work upon are easily discern'd how they work so that it is not difficult to find the reason why some hard bodies break easily and others with much ado The first of which are called brittle the others tough For if you mark it all breaking requires that bending should precede which on the one side compresses the parts of the bended body and condenses them into a lesser room then they possess'd before and on the other side stretches them out and makes them take up more place This requires some fluid or moveable substance to be within the body else it could not be done for without such help the parts could not remove Therfore such hard bodies as have most fluid parts in them are most flexible that is are toughest and those whcih have fewest though they become therby hardest to have impression made upon them yet if the force be able to do it they rather yield to break then to bend and thence are called brittle Out of this we may infer that some bodies may be so suddenly bent as that therby they break afunder wheras if they were leisurely and gently dealt withal they would take what play one desires And likewise that there is no body be it never so brittle and hard but it will bend a little and indeed more then one would expect if it be wrought upon with time dexterity for there is none but contains in it some liquid parts more or less even glass and brick Upon which occasion I remember how once in a great storm of wind I saw the high slender brick Chimneys of the Kings house at S. James's one winter when the Court lay there bend from the wind like boughs and shake exceedingly and totter And at other times I have seen some very high and pointy Spire Steeples do the like And I have been assured the like of the whole pile of a high castle standing in a gullet in the course of the winde namely the castle of Wardour who have often seen it
through the nose of the Limbeck and falls into the receiver So that if we will say that a Plant lives or that the whole moves it self and every part moves another 't is to be understood in afar more imperfect manner then when we seak of an Animal and the same words are attributed to both in a kind of equivocal sense But by the way I must note that under the title of Plants I include not Zoophytes or Plant Animals that is such creatures as though they go not from place to place and so cause a local motion of their whole substance yet in their parts they have a distinct and articulate motion But to leave comparisons and come to the proper nature of the things Let us frame a conception that not far under the superficies of the earth there were gather'd together divers parts of little mixed bodies which in the whole sum were yet but little and that this little mass had some excess of fire in it such as we see in wet Hay or in muste of wine or in woort of beer and that withal the drought of it were in so high a degree as this heat should not find means being too much compressed to play his game and that lying there in the bosome of the earth it should after some little time receive its expected and desired drink through the benevolence of the heaven by which it being moistned and therby made more pliable and tender and easie to be wrought upon the little parts of fire should break loose and finding this moisture a fit subject to work upon should drive it into all the parts of the little mass and digesting there should make the mass swel Which action taking up long time for its performance in respect of the small increase of bulk made in the mass by the swelling of it could not be hindred by the pressing of the earth though lying never so weightily upon it according to the maxime we have above deliver'd that any little force be it never so little 't is able to overcome any great resistance be it never so powerful if the force multiply the time it works in sufficiently to equalize the proportions of the agent and the resistant This increase of bulk and swelling of the lettle mass will of its own nature be towards all sides by reason of the fire heat that occasions it whose motion is on every side from the centre to the circuÌ„ference but it wil be most efficacious upwards towards the air because the resistance is least that way both by reason of the little thickness of the earth over it as also by reason that the uper part of the earth lies very loose and is exceeding porous through the continual operation of â—e Sun and falling of rain upon it It cannot choose therfore but mount to the air and the same cause that makes it do so presses at the same time the lower parts of the mass downwards But what ascends to the air must be of the hotter and more moist parts of the fermenting mass and what goes downwards must be of his harder and drier parts proportionate to the contrary motions of fire and earth which predominate in these two kinds of parts Now this that is push'd upwards comcoming above ground and being there exposed to Sun and wind contracts thereby a hard and rough skin on its outside but within is more tender in this sort it defends it self from outward injuries of weather whiles it mounts and by thrusting other parts down into the earth it holds it self steadfast that although the wind may shake it yet it cannot overthrow it The greater this Plant grows the more juice daily accrews to it and the heat is encreased and consequently the greater abundance of humours is continually sent up Which when it begins to clog at the top new humours pressing upwards forces a breach in the skin and so a new piece like the main stem is thrust out and begins on the sides which we call a Branch Thus is our Plant amplified till nature not being able still to breed such strong issues falls to works of less labour and pushes forth the most elaborate part of the plants juice into more tender substances but especially at the ends of the branches where abundant humour but at the first not well concocted grows into the shape of a Button and more and better concocted humour succeeding it grows softer and softer the Sun drawing the subtilest parts outwards excepting what the coldness of the air and the roughness of the wind harden into an outward skin So then the next parts to the skin are tender but the very middle of this button must be hard and dry by reason that the Sun from without and the natural heat within drawing and driving out the moysture and extending it from the center must needs leave the more earthy parts much shrunk up hardned by their evaporating out from them which hardning being an effect of fire within and without that bakes this hard substance incorporates much of it self with it as we have formerly declared in the making of salt by force of fire This button thus dilated and brought to this pass we call the Fruit of the Plant whose harder part encloses oftentimes another not so hard as dry The reason whereof is because the outward hardness permits no moisture to soake in any abundance through it and then that which is enclosed in it must needs be much dried though not so much but that it still retains the common nature of the plant This drought makes these inner parts to be like a kind of dust or at least such as may be easily dried into dust when they are bruised out of the husk that incloses them And in every parcel of this dust the nature of the whole resides as it were contracted into a small quantity For the juice which was first in the button and had passed from the root through the manifold varieties of the divers parts of the plant and suffer'd much concoction partly from the Sun and partly from the inward heat imprison'd in that harder part of the fruit is by these passages strainings and concoctions become at length to be like a tincture extracted out of the whole plant and and is at last dried up into a kind of magistery This we call the Seed which is of a fit nature by being buried in the earth and dissolv'd with humour to renew and reciprocate the operation we have thus described And thus you have the formation of a Plant. But a Sensitive Creature being compared to a Plant as a plant is to mixed body you cannot but conceive that he must be compounded as it were of many plants in like sort as a plant is of many mixed bodies But so that all the Plants which concur to make one Animal are of one kind of nature and cognation and besides the matter of which such diversity is to be made must
while longer fighting would have sunk one another But besides the motions in the air which receiv'd them easily by reason of the fluidity of it we see that even solid bodies participate of it As if you knock never so lightly at one end of the longest beam you can find it will be distinctly heard at the other end The trampling of men and horses in a quiet night wil be heard some miles off if one lay their ear to the ground and more sensibly if one make a little hole in the earth and put ones ear into the mouth of it but most of all if one set a Drum smooth upon the ground and lay ones ear to the upper edge of it for the lower membrane of the Drum is shaked by the motion of the earth and then multiplies that sound by the hollow figure of the Drum in the conveying it to the upper membrane upon which your ear leans Not much unlike the Tympane or Drum of the ear which being shaked by outward motion causes a second motion on the inside of it correspondent to this first and this having a free passage to the brain strikes it immediately and so informes it how things move without which is all the mystery of hearing If any thing break or stop this motion before it shake our ear it is not heard And accordingly we see that the sound of Bells or Artillery is heard much further if it have the conduct of waters then through the pure air because in such bodies the great continuity of them makes that one part cannot shake alone and upon their superficies there is no notable unevenness nor any dense thing in the way to check the motion as in the air hills buildings trees and such like so that the same shaking goes a great way And to confirm that this is the true reason I have several times observ'd that standing by a river side I heard the sound of a ring of Bells much more distinctly and loud then if I went some distance from the water though nearer to the steeple from whence the sound came And it is not only the motion of the air that makes sound in our ears but any motion that hath access to them in such a manner as to shake the quivering membranous Tympane within them will represent to us those motions which are without and so make such a sound there as if it were convey'd onely by the air Which is plainly seen when a man lying a good way under water shall there hear the same sounds as are made above in the air but in a more clumsie manner according as the water by being thicker and more corpulent is more unwieldy in its motions And this I have tryed often staying under water as long as the necessity of breathing would permit me Which shews that the air being smartly moved moves the water also by means of its continuity with it and that liquid element being fluide and getting into the ear makes vibrations upon the drum of it like to those of air But all this is nothing in respect of what I might in some sort say and yet speak truth Which is that I have seen one who could discern sounds with his eyes 'T is admirable how one sense will oftentimes supply the want of another whereof I have seen an other strange example in a different strain from this of a man that by his grosser senses had his want of sight wonderfully made up He was so throughly blind that his eyes could not inform him when the Sun shined for all the cry stalline humour was out in both his eyes yet his other senses instructed him so efficaciously in what was their office to have done as what he wanted in them seem'd to be overpay'd in other abilities To say that he would play at Cards and Tables as well as most men is rather a commendation of his memory phantasie then of any of his outward senses But that he should play wel at Bowles and Shovelbord and other games of aim which in other men require clear sight and an exact level of the hand according to the qualities of the earth or table and to the situation and distance of the place he was to throw at seems to exceed possibility And yet he did all this He would walk in a chamber or long alley in a garden after he had been a while used to them as straight and turn as just at the ends as any seeing man could do He would go up and down every where so confidently and demean himself at table so regularly as strangers have sitten by him several meals and seen him walk about the house without ever observing any want of seeing in him which he endeavour'd what he could to hide by wearing his hat low upon his brows He would at the first abord of a stranger as soon as he spoke to him frame a right apprehension of his stature bulk and manner of making And which is more when he taught his Schollers to declame for he was School-master to my sons and lived in my house or to represent some of Seneca's Tragedies or the like he would by their voice know their gesture and the situation they put their bodies in so that he would be able as soon as they spoke to judge whether they stood or sate or in what posture they were which made them demean themselvs as decently before him whiles they spoke as if he had seen them perfectly Though all this be very stange yet me thinks his discerning of lights is beyond it all He would feel in his body and chiefly in his brain as he hath often told me a certain effect by which he knew when the Sun was up and would discern exactly a clear from a cloudy day This I have known him frequently do without missing when for trial sake he has been lodged in a close chamber whereto the clear light or Sun could not arrive to give him any notice by its actual warmth nor any body could come to him to give him private warnings of the Changes of the weather But this is not the relation I intended when I mention'd one that could hear by his eyes if that expression may be permited me I then reflected upon a Noble man of great quality that I knew in Spain the younger brother of the Constable of Castile But the reflection of his seeing of words call'd into my remembrance the other that felt light in whom I have often remark'd so many strange passages with amazement and delight that I have adventured upon the Readers patience to record some of them conceiving they may be of some use in our course of doctrine But the Spanish Lord was born deaf so deaf that if a Gun were shot off close by his ear he could not hear it and consequently he was dumb for not being able to hear the sound of words he could never imitate nor understand them The loveliness of
towards that side on which the shadow appears in respect of the opacous body or of the illuminant and so be a cause of deepness of Colour on that side if it happen to be fringed with colour CHAP. XXXI The causes of certain appearances in luminous Colours with a Conclusion of the discourse touching the Senses and the Sensible Qualities OUt of these grounds we are to seek the resolution of all such Symptoms as appear to us in this kind of colours First therfore calling to mind how we have already declared that the red colour is made by a greater proportion of light mingled with darkness and the blew with a less proportion it must follow that when light passes through a glass in such sort as to make colours the mixture of the light and darkness on that side where the light is strongest will encline to a red and their mixture on the otherside where the light is weakest will make a violet or blew And this we see fall out accordingly in the light which is tincted by going through a Prism for a red colour appears on that side from which the light dilates or encreases and a blew is on that side towards which it decreases Now if a dark body be placed within this light so as to have the light come on both sides of it we shall see the contrary happen about the borders of the picture or shadow of the dark body that is to say the red colour will be on that side of the picture which is towards or over against the blew colour made by the glass and the blew of the picture will be on that side which is towards the red made by the glass as you may experience if you place a slender opacous body along the Prism in the way of the light either before or behind the Prism The reason wherof is that the opacous body standing in the middle environ'd by light divides it and makes two lights of that which was but one each of which lights is comprised between two darknesses to wit between each border of Shadow that joyns to each extreme of the light that comes from the glass and each side of the Opacous bodies shadow Wherfore in each of these lights or rather in each of their comixtions with darkness there must be red on the one side and blew on the other according to the course of light which we have explicated And thus it falls out agreeable to the Rule we have given that blew comes to be on that side of the opacous bodies shadow on which the glass casts red and red on that side of it on which the glass casts blew Likewise when light going through a convex glass makes two cones the edges of the cone betwixt the glass the point of concourse will appear red if the room be dark enough and the edges of the further cone will appear blew both for the reason given For in this case the point of concourse is the strong light betwixt the two cones of which that betwixt the glass and the point is the stronger that beyond the point the weaker And for this very reason if an opacous body be put in the axis of these two cones both the sides of its picture will be red if it be held in the first cone which is next to the glass and both will be blew if the body be situated in the further cone for both sides being equally situated to the course of the light within its own cone there is nothing to vary the colours but only the strength and weakness of the two lights of the cones on this that side the point of the concourse which point being in this case the strong and clear light wherof we made general mention in our precedent note the cone towards the glass and the illuminant is the stronger side and the cone from the glass is the weaker In those cases where this reason is not concern'd we shall see the victory carried in the question of colours by the shady side of the opacous body that is the blew colour will still appear on that side of the opacous bodies shadow that is furthest from the illuminant But where both causes concur and contest for precedence there the course of the light carries it that is to say the red will be on that side of the opacous bodies shadow where it is thicker and darker and blew on the otherside where the shadow is not so strong although the shadow be cast that way that the red appears as is to be seen when a slender body is placed betwixt the Prism and the reflectant body upon which the light colours are cast through the Prism And 't is evident that this cause of the course of the shadow is in it self a weaker cause than the other of the course of light and must give way to it whenever they incounter as it cannot be expected but that in all circumstances shadows should be light because the colours which the glass casts in this case are much more faint and dusky than in the other For effects of this latter cause we see that when an opacous body lyes cross the Prism whiles it stands end-ways the red or blew colour will appear on the upper or lower side of its picture according as the illuminant is higher or lower then the transverse opacous body the blew ever keeping to that side of the picture that is furthest from the body and the illuminant that make it and the red the contrary Likewise if an opacous body be placed out of the axis in either of the cones we have explicated before the blew will appear on that side of the picture which is furthest advanced in the way that the shadow is cast and the red on the contrary And so if the opacous body be placed in the first cone beside the axis the red will appear on that side of the picture in the basis of the second cone which is next to the circumference and the blew on that side next the axis but if it be placed on one side of the axis in the second cone then the blew will appear on that side the picture is next the circumference and the red on that side which is next the center of the basis of the cone There remains yet one difficulty of moment to be determined which is Why when through a glass two colours namely blew and red are cast from a Candle upon a paper or wall if you put your eye in the place of one of the colours that shines upon the wall and so that colour comes to shine upon your eye so that another man who looks upon it will see thot colour plainly upon your eye nevertheless you shall see the other colour in the glass as for example if on your eye there shines a red you shall see a blew in the glass and if a blew shines upon your eye you shall see a
aversion from it immediately proceeds As when a dog sees a man that uses to give him meat the species of the man coming into his fansie calls out of his memory the others which are of the same nature and are former participations of that man as well as this fresh one is but these are joyn'd with spicies of meat because at other times they did use to come in together and therfore the meat being a good unto him and causing him in the manner we have said to move towards it it will follow that the dog will presently move towards that man and express a contentedness in being with him And this is the ground of all assuefaction in beasts and of making them capable of receiving any instructions CHAP. XXXV Of the material instruments of Knowledge and Passion Of the several effects of Passions Of Pain and Pleasure and how the vital spirits are sent from the brain into the intended parts of the body without mistaking their way TO conclude this great business which concerns all the mutations and motions that are made by outward Agents in a living creature it will not be amiss to take a short and general survey of the material instruments which concur to this effect Wherof the brain being principal or at least the first and next of the principals we may take notice that it contains towards the middle of its substance four concavities as some count them but in truth these four are but one great concavity in which four as it were divers rooms may be distinguished The nether part of these concavities is very unequal having joyn'd to it a kind of a net wrought by the entangling of certain little arteries and of small emanations from a Sinus which are interwoven together Besides this it is full of kernels which make it yet more uneven Now two rooms of this great concavity are divided by a little body somwhat like a skin though more fryable which of it self is clear but there it is somwhat dim'd by reason that hanging a little slack it somwhat shrivels together and this Anatomists call Septum lucidum or speculum and 't is a different body from all the rest that are in the brain This transparent body hangs as it were straightwards from the forehead towards the hinder part of the head and divides the hollow of the brain as far as it reaches into the right and the left ventricles This part seems to me after weighing all circumstances and considering all the conveniencies and fitnesses to be that and only that in which the fansie or common sense resides though Monsir des Cartes has rather chosen a kernel to place it in The reasons of my assertions are First that it is in the middle of the brain which is the most convenient situation to receive the messages from all our body that come by nervs some from before and some from behind Secondly that with its two sides it seems conveniently opposed to all such of our senses as are double the one of them sending its little messengers or atomes to give it advertisements on one side the other on the other side so that it is capable of receiving impression indifferently from both Again by the nature of the body it seems more fit to receive all differences of motion than any other body near it It is also most conformable to the nature of the eye which being our principal outward sense must needs be in the next degree to that which is elevated a strain above our outward senses Fifthly it is of a singular and peculiar nature wheras the kernels are many and all of them of the same condition quality and appearance Sixthly it is seated in the very hollow of the brain which of necessity must be the place and receptacle where the specieses and similitudes of things reside and where they are moved and tumbled up and down when we think of many things And lastly the situation we put our head in when we think earnestly of any thing favours this opinion for then we hang our head forwards as it were forcing the specieses to settle towards our forehead that from thence they may rebound and work upon this diaphanous substance This then supposed let us consider that the atomes or likenesses of bodies having given their touch upon this Septum or Speculum do thence retire back into the concavities and stick as by chance it happens in some of the inequalities they encounter with there But if some wind or forcible steam should break into these caves and as it were brush and sweep them over it must follow that these little bodies will loosen themselvs and begin to play in the vapour which fills this hollow place and so floting up and down come anew to strike and work upon the Speculum or fantasy Which being also a soluble body many times these atomes striking on it carry some little corporeal substance from it sticking upon them whence ensues that they returning again with those tinctures or participations of the very substance of the fantasy make us remember not only the objects themselvs but also that we have thought of them before Further we are to know that all the nervs of the brain have their beginnings not far from this speculum of which we shall more particularly consider two that are call'd the sixth pair or couple which pair has this singularity that it begins in a great many little branches that presently grow together and make two great ones contain'd within one skin Now this being the property of a sense which requires to have many fibers in it that it may be easily and vigorously strucken by many parts of the object lighting upon many parts of those little fibers it gives us to understand that this sixth couple hath a particular nature conformable to the nature of an extern sense and that the Architect who placed it there intended by the several conduits of it to give notice to some part they go to of what passes in the brain And accordingly one branch of this nerve reaches to the heart not only to the Pericardium as Galen thought but even to the very substance of the heart it self as later Anatomists have discover'd by which we plainly see how the motion which the senses make in the Speculum may be derived down to the heart Now therfore let us consider what effects the motions so convey'd from the brain will work in the heart First remembring how all that moves the heart is either pain or pleasure though we do not use to call it pain but grief when the evil of sense moves us only by memory and not by being actually in the sense and then calling to mind how pain as Naturalists teach us consists in some division of a nerve which they call Solutio continui and must be in a nerve for that no solution can be the cause of pain without sense nor sense be without nerves we may conclude
in part the other defect Hope on the other side is in such sort defective from joy that nevertheless it hath a kind of constancy and moderate quantity and regularity in its motion and therefore is accounted to be the least hurtful of all the passions and that which more prolongs mans life And thus you see how those motions which we call passions are engender'd in the heart and what they are Let us then in the next place consider what will follow in the rest of the body out of these varieties of Passions once rais'd in the heart and sent into the brain 'T is evident that according to the nature and quality of these motions the heart must needs in every one of them void out of it self into the arteries a greater or lesser quantity of blood and that in divers fashions and the arteries which lie fittest to receive these sudden egestions of blood are those which go into the brain which course being directly upwards we cannot doubt but that it is the hottest and subtilest part of the blood and the fullest of spirits that flies that way These spirits then running a long and perplexed journey up and down in the brain by various meanders and anfractuosities are there mingled with the humid steam of the brain it self and therwith cooled and come at last to smoak at liberty in the hollow ventricles of the brain by reeking out of the little arterial branches that weave the plexus choroides or net we spoke of erewhile and they being now grown heavy fall by their natural course into that part or process of the brain which is called medulla spinalis or the marrow of the back-bone which being beset by the nervs that run through the body it cannot happen otherwise but that these thick'ned and descending spirits must either fall themselvs into those nervs or else press into them other spirits which are before them that without such new force to drive them violently forwards would have slided down more leisurely Now this motion being downwards and meeting with no obstacle till it arrive to its utmost period that way the lowest nervs are those which naturally feel the communication of these spirits first But 't is true if the flowing tide of them be great and plentiful all the other nerves will also be so suddenly fill'd upon the filling of the lowermost that the succession of their swellings will hardly be perceptible as a sudden and violent inundation of water seems to rise on the sides of the channel as it doth at at the Mill-dam though reason assures us it must begin there because there it is first stop't On the contrary side if the spirits be few they may be in such a proportion as to fill only the lower nervs and to communicate little of themselvs to any of the others And this is the case in the passion of fear which being stored with fewer spirits than any other passion that causes a motion in the body it moves the leggs most and so carries the animal that is afraid with violence from the object that affrights him Although in truth it is a faint hope of escaping mingled with fear which begets this motion for when fear is single and at its height it stops all motion by contracting the spirits and thence is called Stupor as well as grief for the same reason And accordingly we see extreme cowards in the extremity of their fear have not the courage to run away no more than to defend or help themselvs by any other motions But if there be more abundance of spirits then the upper parts are also moved as well as the leggs whose motion contributes to defence but the brain it self and the senses which are in the head being the first in the course of this floud of spirits that is sent from the heart to the head 't is impossible but that some part of them should be press'd into the nervs of those senses and so will make the animal vigilant and attentive to the cause of its fear or grief But if the fear be so great that it contracts all the spirits and quite hinders their motion as in the case we touch'd above then it leaves also the nervs of the senses destitute of spirits and so by too strong apprehension of a danger the animal neither sees nor apprehends it but as easily precipitates it self into it as it happens to avoid it being meerly govern'd by chance and may peradventure seem valiant through extremity of fear And thus you see in common how all the natural operations of the body follow by natural consequence out of the passions of the mind without needing to attribute discourse or reason either to men or beasts to perform them Although at first sight some of them may appear to those that look not into their principles and true causes to flow from a source of intelligence wheras 't is evident by what we have laid open they all proceed from the due ranging and ordering of quantitative parts so or so proportioned by rarity and density And there is no doubt but who would follow this search deeply might certainly retrive the reasons of all those external motions which we see use to accompany the several passions in Men and Beasts But for our intent we have said enough to shew by what kind of order and course of nature they may be effected without confining our selves over scrupulously to every cincumstance that we have touch'd and to give a hint wherby others that will make this inquiry their task may compile an intire and well grounded and intelligible doctrine of this matter Only we will add one advertisment more which is that these external motions caused by passion are of two kinds for some of them are as it were the beginnings of the actions which nature intends to have follow out of the passions that cause them but others are only bare signs of passions that produce them and are made by the connexion of parts unnecessary for the main action that is to follow out of the passion with other parts that by the passion are necessarily moved As for example when an hungry mans mouth waters at the sight of good meat it is a kind of beginning of eating or of preparation for eating for when we eat nature draws a moisture into our mouth to humectate our meat and convey the tast of it into the nervs of the tongue which are to make report of it to the brain but when we laugh the motion of our face aims at no further end and follows only by the connexion of those muscles which draw the face in such a sort to some inward parts that are moved by the passion out of which laughing proceeds But we must not leave this subject without some mention of the Diaphragma into which the other branch of those nervs that are called of the sixth conjugation comes for the first branch we have said goes into the heart and carries
our Sensual part and its antagonist which maintains the resolution set by reason and observe how exceedingly their courses and proceedings differ from one another we shall more plainly discern the nature and power and efficacy of both of them We may perceive that the motions against Reason rise up turbulently as it were in billows and like a hill of boiling water as truly Passion is a conglobation of spirits put us into an unquiet and distemper'd heat and confusion On the other side Reason endeavours to keep us in our due temper by somtimes commanding down this growing sea otherwhile contenting in some measure the desires of it and so diverting another way its unruly force somtimes she terrifies it by the proposal of offensive things joyn'd to those 't is so earnest to enjoy again somtimes she prevents it by cuting off all the causes and helps that promote on its impotent desires and by engaging before hand the power of it in other things and the like All which evidently convince that as Reason hath a great strength and power in opposition of Sense so it must be a quite different thing and of a contrary nature to it We may add that the work of Reason can never be well perform'd but in a great quiet and tranquillity wheras the motions of Passion are always accompanied with disorder and perturbation So as it appears manifestly that the force of Reason is not purely the force of its Instruments but the force of its instruments as they are guided and as the quantities of them are proportioned by it And this force of Reason is different from the force of its instruments of themselvs as the force of a Song is different from the force of the same sounds wherof it is composed taken without that Order which the Musitian puts in them for otherwise the more spirits that are rais'd by any thought which Spirits are the Instruments whereby Reason performs all her operations in us the more strongly reason should work the contrary of which is evident for we see that too great abundance of Spirits confounds Reason This is as much as at present I intend to insist upon for proof that our Understanding hath its proper and distinct operations and works in a peculiar manner and in a quite different strain from all that is done by our Senses Peradventure some may conceive that the watchfulness and recalling of our thoughts back to their enjoyn'd work when they break loose and run astray and our not letting them range abroad at random doth also convince this assertion but I confess ingenuously the testimony of it seems not clear to me and therfore I rank it not with those that I would have if it may be solidly weighty and undeniable to one who shall consider maturely the bottom and full efficaciousness of them Of such a few or any one is enough to settle ones mind in the belief of a truth and I hope that this which I have labour'd for in this Chapter is so sufficiently proved as we need not make up our evidence with number of Testimonies But to shew the exceptions I take against this argument let us examine how this act within us which we call watchfulness is perform'd Truly me-thinks it appears to be nothing else but the promptitude and recourse of some spirits that are proper for this effect which by a mans earnestness in his resolution take a strong impression and so are still ready to knock frequently at the door of our understanding and therby enable it with power to recal our stray'd thoughts Nay the very reflection itself which we make upon our thoughts seems to me only this that the object beating upon the fansie carries back with it at its retiring from thence some little particle or atome of the brain or Septum Lucidum against which it beats sticking upon it in like manner as upon another occasion we instanced in a Ball rebounding from a green Mud-wall to which some of the matter of the wall must needs adhere Now this object together with the addition it gets by its stroak upon the fansie rebounding thence and having no more to do there at present betakes it self to rest quietly in some Cell it is disposed into in the brain as we have deliver'd at large in our former Treatise where we discoursed of Memory but whenever it is called for again by the fansie or upon any other occasion returns thither it comes as it were capped with this additional piece it acquir'd formerly in the fansie and so makes a representation of its own having been formerly there Yet be these actions perform'd how they will it cannot be deny'd but both of them are such as are not fit nor would be any ways useful to creatures that have not the power of ordering their own thoughts and fansies but are govern'd throughout meerly by an uniform course of nature Which ordering of thoughts being an operation feasible only by rational creatures and none others these two actions which would be in vain where such ordering is not used seem to be specially ordain'd by nature for the service of Reason and of the Understanding although peradventure a precise proper working of the understanding do not clearly shine in it Much less can we by experience find among all the actions we have hither to spoken of that our Reason or Understanding works singly and alone by it self without the assistance and consortship of the fansie and as little can I tell how to go about to seek any experience of it But what Reason may do in this particular we shall hereafter enquire and end this Chapter with collecting out of what is said how it fares with us when we do any thing against Reason or against our own knowledge If this happen by surprise 't is plain that the watch of Reason was not so strong as it should have been to prevent the admittance or continuance of those thoughts which work that transgression Again if it be occasion'd by Passion 't is evident that in this case the multitude and violence of those spirits which Passion sends boyling up to the fansie is so great as the other spirits which are in the jurisdiction and government of Reason are not able for the present to ballence them and stay their impetuosity whiles she makes truth appear Somtimes we may observe that Reason hath warning enough to mustet together all her forces to encounter as it were in battail the assault of some concupiscence that sends his unruly bands to take possession of the fansie and constrain it to serve their desires and by it to bring Reason to their bent Now if in this pitch'd field she lose the bridle and be carried away against her own resolutions and forced like a captive to obey the others laws 't is clear that her strength was not so great as the contrary factions The cause of which is evident for we know she can do nothing but by the
assistance of the spirits which inhabit the brain now then it follows that if she have not the command of those spirits which flock thither she must of necessity be carried along by the stream of the greater and stronger multitude which in our case is the throng of those that are sent up into the brain by the desired object and they come thither so thick and so forcibly that they displace the others which fought under Reasons Standard Which if they do totally and excluding Reasons party entirely possess the fansie with their troops as in madness and extremity of sudden passion it happens then must Reason wholly follow their sway without any strugling at all against it for whatever beats on the fansie occasions her to work and therfore when nothing beats there but the messengers of some sensual object she can make no resistance to what they impose But if it happen that these tumultuary ones be not the only spirits which beat there but Reason hath likewise some under her jurisdiction which keep possession for her though they be too weak to turn the others out of doors then 't is true she can still direct fairly how in that case a man should govern himself but when he comes to execute he finds his sinews already possess'd and swel'd with the contrary spirits and they keeping out the smaller and weaker number which reason has rank'd in order and would furnish those parts with he is drawn even against his judgment and reason to obey their appetites and move himself in prosecution of what they propose experimenting in himself what the Poet expresses in Medea when she complain'd and bemoan'd her self in these words Video meliora proboque Deteriora sequor And in this case a man foresees his misery all the way he rouls towards it and leaps into the precipice with his eyes open Which shews that the Army of thoughts on Reason's side should be increas'd in number to have her strong enough to wage battle with the rebellious adversary or else that her adversary should be so much weakned that she though not grown stronger in her self yet might through the others enfeebling beable to make her party good and hence is the use of corporeal Mortifications to subject our Passions to the command of Reason Even as when we see that when we are in health our arms and legs and all our limbs obey our will reaching what we command them and carrying us whither we desire because the spirits which are sent into them from our brain are strong enough to raise and move them as they are directed but if our sinews be so steep'd in some cold and watry humour that the spirits coming down find not means to swell and harden them well we may wish and strive but all in vain for we shall not be able to make them perform their due functions In like manner if Reason send her emissaries into the arm or leg or other member and no other spirits there strive against them then that limb is moved and govern'd absolutely according to her directions but if at the same time a greater multitude of others hinder Reasons servants from coming thither or flocking into other sinews carry that limb a contrary way in vain Reason strives to move them to her byas for those obeying parts must observe the rules which the violent conqueror prescribes CHAP. V. Containing proofs out of our Single Apprehensions that our Soul is Incorporeal AS in our First Treatise we dissected Nature and shew'd how out of the notion and first division of Quantity arises that vast multiplicity of things which filling this world falls under the consideration of our senses so in the begining of this Second Treatise we have search'd into those operations of a Man attributed to his Soul by which he is conceiv'd to excel all other living creatures and there discover'd that the admirable and unlimited variety of works which is seen in mens writings and actions doth all flow from the source of Single Apprehensions and even from one bare notion of Being which is the root and principle from whence all others derive their origine and into which all may be resolved Works proceeding from Resolutions they from Discourses these being composed of Judgments and Judgments of Single Apprehensions This part we must now review and enquire what we can find in mans operation arguing the Quality of his Soul whether it be corporeal or no. For if these Single Apprehensions and the processes compounded of them may be perform'd by the Ordering of Rare and Dense parts as the other works of nature are then they will be corporeal and of the same kind with those which we opened in the first Treatise but if we shall prove that they cannot possibly be deduced from Multiplicity and Order of Quantitative parts then we may confidently resolve of our selvs that in the cause from which they flow there is a nature wholly discrepant from that which resides among bodies and corporeal things This we shall here labour to do and to that end we will begin our work with reflecting on what we have deliver'd of a Single Apprehension in the First Chapter of this Second Treatise whose nature we there first explicated in common and thence proceeded to some particular apprehensions and lastly shew'd the extent they comprehended These then must be the subject of our present speculation As for their nature we may remember how we resolv'd three things first that by apprehension the very thing apprehended is by it self in our Soul next that the notion of Being is the first of all notions and resumed in all others and thirdly that what is added to the notion of Being is but respects to other things Now then let us consider what kind of Engines they must be that may have the power to make things themselvs to be in our Soul if they were to be there materially How shall the place or the time pass'd be removed and put in another place and in another time How shall the quantity of the Heavens of the whole World nay of Bigness exceeding all that by millions of proportional encreases be shut up in the little circuit of Mans Brain And if we examine our selves strictly we shall find nothing wanting all is there How shall the same thing be corporeally in two nay in two thousand places at the same time And yet in so many is the Sun when two thousand men think of it at once We must then allow that things are there immaterially and consequently that what receives them is immaterial since every thing is received according to the measure and nature of what receives it But I easily conceive that the strangeness and incredibility of our position may counterballance the force of it for who can perswade himself that the very thing he apprehends is in his mind I acknowledg that if its being there were to be understood corporeally it were impossible but on the other
them we have not been able to carry these grounds nor they us Let him then take the pains to shew us by what Figures by what First Qualities by what Mixtion of Rare and Dense parts an Universal Apprehension an evident Judgment a legitimate Consequence is made and the like of a mans determination of himself to answer pertinently any question of his choosing this way before that c. Which if he can do as I am sure he cannot I shall allow it to be reason and not obstinacy that works in his mind and carrys him against our Doctrine But if he cannot and that there is no appearance nor possibility as indeed there is not that these actions can be effected by the ordering of material parts and yet he will be still unsatisfy'd without being able to tell why for he will be unwilling to acknowledg that these abstracted Speculations do not sink into him and that nothing can convince him but what his Senses may be judges of and he may handle and turn on every side like a brick or tile and will be still importune with cavillous scruples and wild doubts that in truth and at the bottome signifie nothing we will leave him to meditate at his leisure upon what we have said while we proceed on to what follows out of this great principle That Our Soul is Incorporeal and Spiritual CHAP. IX That our Soul is a Substance and Immortal HAving concluded that our Soul is immaterial and indivisible to proceed one step further it cannot be deny'd but that it is either a Substance or an Accident If the later it must be of the nature of the substance whose accident it is for so we see all accidents are but in man when his Soul is excluded there is no spiritual substance at all wherof we have any notice and therfore if it be an accident it must be a corporeal one or some accident of a body as some figure temperature harmony or the like and consequently divisible but this is contrary to what is proved in the former Chapters and therefore it cannot be a corporeal accident Neither can it be a spiritual accident for to what spiritual substance should it belong when as nothing in man can be suspected to be spiritual but it self Seeing then that it can be no accident a substance it must be and must have its Existence or Being in it self Here we have passed the Rubicon of experimental knowledg we are now out of the bounds that experience hath any jurisdiction over and from henceforth we must in all our searches and conclusions rely only upon the single evidence of Reason And even this last conclusion we have been fain to deduce out of the force of abstracted reasoning upon what we had gather'd before not by immediate reflection upon some action we observe proceeding from a man yet withal nature flashes out by a direct beam some little glimmering of the verity of it to the eye of Reason within us For as when we see a Clock move or a Mill or any thing that goes by many wheels if we mark that there are two contrary motions in two divers parts of it we cannot think that those contrary motions belong to one and the same continued body but shall presently conclude there must be in that Engine two several bodies compacted together So in Man though his Body be the first mover that appears to us yet seeing that in his actions some effects shew themselvs which 't is impossible should proceed from a Body 't is evident that in him there is some other thing besides that one which we see And consequently we may conclude that he is composed of a Body and somwhat else that is not-a-Body which somewhat else being the spring from whence those actions flow that are of a different strain from those derived from the body must necessarily be a Spiritual Substance But while we are examining how far our present considerations and short discourses may carry us as it were experimentally to confirm this truth we must not omit what Avicenna in his Book De Anima Almahad and Monsier des Cartes in his Method press upon the same occasion Thus they say or to like purpose If I cast with my self who I am that walk or speak or think or order any thing my reason will answer me that although my legs or tongue were gone and that I could no longer walk or speak yet were not I gone and I should know and see with my understanding that I were still the very same thing the same Ego as before The same as of my tongue or legs would reason tell me of my eys my ears my smelling tasting and feeling either all of them together or every one of them single that were they all gone still should I remain As when in a dream where I use none of all these I both am and know my self to be Reason will tell me also that although I were not nourished so I were not wasted which for the drâ—ft of the argument may be supposed yet still I should continue in Being Whence it would appear that my heart liver lungs kidneys stomach mouth and what other parts of me soever that serve for the nourishment of my body might be sever'd from me and yet I remain what I am Nay if all the beautiful and airy fantasms which fly about so nimbly in our brain be nothing else but signs to and in our Soul of what is without us 't is evident that though peradventure she would not without their service exercise that which by error we mis-name Thinking yet the very same Soul and Thinker might be without them all and consequently without brain also seeing that our brain is but the play-house and scene where all these faery masks are acted So that in conclusion Reason assures us that when all Body is abstracted in us there still remains a Substance a Thinker an Ego or I that in it self is no whit diminished by being as I may say strip'd out of the case it was inclos'd in And now I hope the intelligent Reader will conceive I have perform'd my promise and shewed the Soul of man to be an Immortal Substance For since it is a Substance it hath a Being and since it is an immaterial Substance it hath a Being of its own force without needing a consort body to help it sustain its Existence for to be a substance is to be the subject of Existence and consequently to be an immaterial substance is to be a subject capable of Existence without the help of matter or Quantity It cannot therfore be required of me to use any further industry to prove such a Soul immortal but who will contradict her being so is obliged to shew that she is mortal for it follows in reason that she will keep her Being unless by some force she be bereav'd of it It being a rule that whoever puts a thing to be is
not bound for the continuation of that things Being to prove that it is not changed but on the other side he tbat averrs it changed is bound to bring in his evidence of a sufficient cause to change it for to have a thing remain is natures own dictamen and follows out of the causes which gave it Being but to make an alteration supposes a change in the causes and therfore the obligation of proof lyes on that side Nevertheless to give satisfaction to those who are earnest to see every article positively proved we will make that part to our Province Let us then remember that Immortality signifies a negation or not-having of Mortality and that a positive term is required to express a change by since nature teaches us that whatever is will remain with the Being it hath unless it be forced out of it If then we shew that Mans Soul hath not those grounds in her which make all things we see to be mortal we must be allow'd to have acquitted our selvs of the charg of proving her Immortal For this end let us look round about us and inquire of all the things we meet with by what means they are changed and come to a period and are no more The pure Elements will tell you that they have their change by rarefaction and condensation and no otherwise Mixed bodies by alteration of their mixture Smal bodies by the activity of the Elements working upon them and by the means of rarefaction and condensation entring into their very constitution and breeding another temperament by separation of some of their parts and in their stead mingling others Plants and trees and other living creatures will tell you that their nourishment being insinuated through their whole bodies by subtile pores and blind passages if they either be stop'd by any accident or else fill'd with bad nourishment the mixture of the whole fails of it self and they come to die Those things which are violently destroy'd we see are made away for the most part by division so fire by division destroyes all that comes in its way so living creatures are destroy'd by parting their blood from their flesh or one member from another or by the evaporation or extinction of their natural heat In fine we are sure that all things which within our knowledg lose their Being do so by reason of their Quantity which by division or by rarefaction and compression gains some new temperature that doth not consist with their former temper After these premisses I need say no more the conclusion displays it self readily and plainly without any further trouble For if our labour hath been hitherto to shew that our Soul is indivisible and that her operations are such as admit not quantitative parts in her 't is clear she cannot be mortal by any of those ways wherby we see things round about us to perish The like argument we may frame out of Local motion For seeing that all the alterative actions we are acquainted with be perform'd by local motion as is deliver'd both in gross and by retail in our first Treatise and that Aristotle and all understanding Philosophers agree there can be no Local motion in an indivisible thing the reason wherof is evident to whomsoever reflects upon the nature of Place and of Local motion 't is manifest there can be no motion to hurt the Soul since she is concluded to be indivisible The common argument likewise used in this matter amounts to the same effect to wit that since things are destroy'd only by their contraries that thing which hath no contrary is not subject to destruction which principle both Reason and Experience every where confirm but a humane Soul is not subject to contrariety therfore such an one cannot be destroy'd The truth of the assumption may be known two ways First because all the contrarieties that are found within our cognisance rise out of the primary opposition of Rarity and Density from which the Soul being absolutely free she likewise is so from all that grows out of that root and Secondly we may be sure that our Soul can receive no harm from contrariety since all contraries are so far from hurting her as contrary wise the one helps her in the contemplation of the other And as for contradiction in thoughts which at different times our Soul is capable of admitting experience teaches us that such thoughts change in her without any prejudice to her substance they being accidents and having their contrariety only betwixt themselvs within her but no opposition at all to her which only is the contrariety that may have power to harm her and therfore whethersoever of such contrary thoughts be in the Soul pertains no more to her subsistence than it doth to the subsistence of a Body whether it be here or there on the right hand or on the left And thus I conceive my task is perform'd and that I am discharg'd of my undertaking to shew the Souls Immortality which imports no more than to shew that the causes of other things mortality do not reach her Yet being well perswaded that my Reader will not be offended with the addition of any new light in this dark subject I will strive to discover if it be possible some positive proof or guess out of the property and nature of the Soul it self why she must remain and enjoy another life after this To this end let us cast our eye back upon what hath been already said concerning her nature We found that Truth is the natural perfection of Mans Soul and that she cannot be assured of truth naturally otherwise than by evidence and therfore 't is manifest that evidence of truth is the full compleat perfection at which the Soul doth aim We found also that the Soul is capable of an absolute infinity of truth or evidence To these two we will ad only one thing more which of it self is past question and therfore needs no proof and then we will deduce our conclusion and this is that a mans Soul is a far nobler and perfecter part of him than his Body and therfore by the rules of nature and wisedom his Body was made for his Soul and not his Soul finally for his Body These grounds being thus lay'd let us examine whether our Soul doth in this life arrive to the end she was ordain'd for or no and if she do not then it must follow of necessity that our Body was made but for a passage by which our Soul should be ferried over into that state where she is to attain to that end for which her nature is fram'd and fited The great skill and artifice of Nature shewing and assuring us that she never fails of compassing her end even in her meanest works and therfore without doubt she would not break her course in her greatest whereof man is absolutely the head and chief among all those we are acquainted with Now what the end is to which our