Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A32696
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The immortality of the human soul, demonstrated by the light of nature in two dialogues.
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Charleton, Walter, 1619-1707.
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1657
(1657)
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Wing C3675; ESTC R20828
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97,023
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206
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like conditions of Matter Truth is I have often heard among your soaring and long-winged Wits of Abstracted and Unbodied Notions and have somtimes perplexed my mind and almost crackt the membranes of my brain in striving how to comprehend them And yet I alwaies found my Phansy so inseparably conjoined to my Intellect as if they were both one and the same Faculty Nor am I yet able to distinguish betwixt my Imagination and Intellection And when once you shall have satisfied me of a reall Difference betwixt them I shall soon confesse you have gone very near the Demonstration of the Souls Immortality Because if the operations of the Intellect be clearly distinct from those of the Phansy which is a Corporeal Faculty and therefore limited to the perception and representation of only Corporeal Natures It will almost follow that the Intellect which is capable of knowing Incorporeals is a substance clearly distinct from the body and so Immaterial since different effects must have different Causes And as for your other Postulate viz. the exemption of my mind from contrary prejudice This also is what I should expect from the efficacy of your intended Arguments For as I told you before I believe the Immortality of the Soul but cannot perswade my self of the possibility of its Demonstration by any other but Divine reasons And it must be your work to convince me of the error of that perswasion Neverthelesse I will assure you of my best Attention and that I come not with a resolution not to be satisfied Athanasius Dear Sir have patience a while and you shall soon perceive both the Necessity and Equity of what I require And in the mean time do not take occasion to anticipate my Notions but leave me to deliver them in their due places and order Lucretius I shall punctually observe your commands and therefore if you think fit immediately addresse your self to your Demonstration Athanasius First it will be convenient in order to the prevention of all Equivocation and Logomachy that may arise from the various use of the word Soul that we insist a little on the examination of that vulgar Opinion which admitteth a real distinction betwixt Animus and Anima the Mind and the Soul In regard it seems to be the very same according to which many Doctors of the Church have conceived the Soul to have Two Parts a Superior and Inferior the one being the Mind Intellect or Reason the other comprehending the Sense Appetite Natural and Brutish There are you know many eminent men as well Theologues as Philosophers who as they hold Man to be composed of two parts a Soul and a Body so do they conceive that his soul is likewise composed of a twofold substance the one Incorporeal or Immaterial immediately created by God and infused into the body at the instant of its Empsychosis or first Animation in the Mothers Womb The other Corporeall or Material originally contained in the Parents Seed and derived ex traduce from the Seminalities of Male and Female commixed in coition which is as it were the Medium or Disposition by the intermediate nature whereof the Diviner part is conjoined and united to the Elementary or Body And this Opinion they ground chieflly upon that speech of the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I perceive a Law in my members warring against the Law of my Mind c. For say they since it is impossible that one Simple Essence or thing should war against or have contrariety to it self from this Repugnancy betwixt the Sense and the Mind or Reason it seems necessarily consequent that the Sensitive and Rational Soul are things essentially different each from other Whereunto they superadd also that unlesse this Distinction be admitted we can never well understand how Man as a living Creature can be said to be in one part little lower than the Angels and in another to be like the Horse or Mule that have no understanding How in respect of one part he is made after the Image of God and in respect of another he is compared to the Beasts that perish How in one respect he acknowledgeth God to be his Author and Principle and in another he owns his production upon his Parents How in one relation he is said to be Immortall and in another subject to death equally with the smallest worme Notwithstanding it is not either the Authority or Arguments of these Men that seem prevalent enough to bring me to be of their persuasion For as to their Authority I could thereunto oppose that of some Fathers yea and Councils who not onely reprehend but condemne all such as make a duality of Souls in man were not the thing already well known to you However suffer me to put you in mind that the pious and learned Conimbricenses who certainly have most profoundly and judiciously of all others handled this Question though they proceed not so far as to censure this conceipt to be Hereticall as some others before them had don yet they expressy declare their Dissent from it And as for their Reasons alledged I thinke them likewise insufficient For all that Psychomachy or intestine Conflicts which these men imagine to be betwixt the inferior part of the soul which is called the sensitive and the superior called the Rational or betwixt the Natural Appetites and the Will doe arise onely from the repugnancy or contrariety which is between those motions of the spirits which are on one side caused by the senses affected by externall objects and those motions of the spirits which on the other side are caused by the will after the soul hath deliberated upon their conveniency and utility And in truth each individuall man hath one and onely one soul in which is no variety of parts that which is the Sensitive is also the Rationall and all her Appetites are absolute Volitions The cause of these mens error seems to be this that they could not well distinguish the Functions proper to the soul from the Functions proper to the body to which alone we ought in right to ascribe whatever we observe in our selves to be repugnant to our Reason So that in Man there is no other Contract or Contrariety of Affections but what consisteth in the contrary motions caused by the spirits and purer part of the blood in that part of the body in which as in its principall and more immediate organ the soul is enthroned and exerciseth her faculties whether that be the Plexus Choroides in the brain as most Physicians conceive or the Heart as the Scripture seems to intimate or the Glandula pinealis in the centre of the brain as Des Cartes affirmeth or any other part whatsoever one of these motions arising from the determination of the spirits by the will one way and the other from the determination of them by the corporeal Appetite another way And hence it comes often to pass that these impulses being contrary each to other the stronger doth impede and
as the Will is absolutely Free to elect or refuse what Objects she pleaseth and such a Freedom cannot consist with an Appetite immersed in Matter and obliged thereunto inseparably because all Dispositions of Matter are determinate and necessary and the effects resulting from those certain dispositions are likewise determinate and necessary therefore is the Will Superior to all Conditions and Obligations of Matter And that the Will hath this arbitrary Liberty of Election or Refusal is demonstrable from hence that it is in the power of every man living to suspend or withold his assent to any proposition whatever until he is able to make a certain judgement of the Verity or Falsity convenience or inconvenience thereof Which reason is so manifest out of our own experience that Des Cartes and He you will confesse was a man of admirable circumspection and strictnesse in examining Fundamental and Proleptical Notions doth securely account it among the First and most common Notions that are Congenial and Innate in the Mind of every man But because the Will is only the Branch and the Understanding the Root upon which it growes and by which it is to be regulated and that what I shall say of the Intellect may be easily accommodated to the Will with equal competency I shall no longer insist upon the consideration of the Will but fix my discourses wholly upon the Intellect as the Principal and Primary Faculty for proof of the Souls Immateriality drawing my Arguments first from the Actions of the Understanding and then from its proper Objects The Operations of the Intellect which give evidence of the Souls Immateriality may be reduced to Three distinct Orders or Classes The First consisting of such by which it may be evinced that Intellection and Imagination are Acts perfectly distinct each from other The Second of such as are called Reflex Acts by which the Intellect doth understand it self and its own proper functions and perceiveth that it doth understand The Third of those by which we do not only form Universals or Universal Notions of things but also understand the very reason of Universality it self And of each of these I intend to speak plainly and succinctly according to this method I begin with Acts of the First Classis not that they are of any singular dignity or excellency above the rest but that I may seasonably remove that obstacle of common prejudice which men generally have and you Lucretius among the rest as your self professed even now that the Intellect is not a Faculty distinct from the Phansie or Imagination as if what we call Imagination in Beasts were really the very same with that which we call Understanding in Men and only different from it secundum magis minus according to the degrees of more and lesse strength and acuteness In Man we cannot but observe a certain sort of Intellection by which the soul exercising her Faculty of Ratiocination doth advance her self to the assured and distinct knowledge or understanding of some things which is impossible for the Imagination ever to have any apprehension of in regard there can be no Images or representations of them in the Phansy though we should with never so much intention or earnestnesse imploy our mind to frame such resemblances For example when considering the Magnitude of the Sun we follow the conduct of our Reason and deduce inferences from sound premises which is Discourse we soon come to know most certainly that the magnitude of the Sun is at least an hundred and sixty times greater than that of the Earth Yet do what we can we can never bring our Imagination to apprehend any such vastnesse but shall find it to consist only in such a small representation of the Solar Globe as the Sense hath delivered into the brain Nay if we set our selves to meditate well and seriously upon the matter we shall soon be satisfied that we cannot imagine the Globe of the Earth which is yet vastly short of that of the Sun to be neer so great as Demonstrations Geometrical convince it to be forasmuch as the Imagination which doth no more but copy out the pictures drawn on the tables of the Senses and that as well in dimensions as figure colour c. conceiveth the Vault or Arch of the Heavens to insist upon the limits of the visible Horizon on every side and that the Clouds Sun Moon Starrs and whatever else we behold within that Arch or Semicircle are not more distant from us than the Horizon is So that you see plainly how little the Imagination doth apprehend the Heavens and the whole World to be and how vastly short we come of imagining the Sun a small part only of the Heavens and of the Universe to be so great as really it is while we cannot imagine the whole World to be as great as the Earth really is But if we appeal to our Understanding that doth instantly assure us by irresistible demonstrations that the World Heavens Sun and Earth are of certain magnitudes incomparably greater than those to which the Phansy can possibly extend its power of comprehension Which I think Lucretius doth not obscurely import that there is more than an imaginary difference between the Understanding and the Phansy Lucretius I do not think so Athanasius For though perhaps I cannot so extend my Imagination as to bring it to fathom or grasp so great a magnitude as that of the Sun all at once Yet I can imagine a greater and greater magnitude by degrees till at last I come to equal the whole real magnitude thereof Nor is it necessary that I should have in my Phansy an Image of greatness equal thereunto while that small one exhibited to me by my sight is sufficient to make me conceive that the real magnitude is greater than the apparent which I can do only by comparing the several apparent magnitudes of one and the same Object at several distances from the eye Athanasius Hear you Sir That Addition you make of one degree of magnitude to another successively till you attain to an apprehension of the real magnitude of the Sun is not an act of your Imagination but purely of your Reason which finding the Image of the Suns greatnesse in your Phansy to be incomparably too small to answer to that immense distance that you understand to be betwixt the Sun and your eye doth by its own proper Faculty supply that disproportion not by enlargement of the Image but by inferring from Geometrical Maxims that a visible Object at that supposed distance though it seem to be no bigger than a Coach-wheel must yet in reality be by vast excesses greater For if you had no other Conception of the Suns Magnitude but what is deduced from the sight how could it ever enter into your mind that the Sun is really so much larger than it appears to be Manifest therefore it is that that enlargement of your conception of the Suns Magnitude beyond that of its apparence is