talent of their Understanding when they imploy it toward the ratification of Divine Traditions Now albeit I admire and could most willingly emulate the perfection of the Former sort Yet I confesse I am not ashamed to rank my self among the Latter For although thanks be to the Mercy of God I do not find my self subject to diffidence in any point of the Christian belief taught me by that Oracle of Sacred wisdom the Word of God Yet me thinks I perceive my faith somwhat Corroborated and Encouraged when to the evidence therof I can superadd also the concurrent testimony of my Reason Nor do I fear the frowns of Theology if I adventure to affirm that that Soul must have a clearer preception of the Excellency of Objects Supernatural who can attain to speculate them both by the light of Grace and that of Nature together I am very far short of their Audacity who are so conceipted of the subtility of their Wit as to permit it to fly at all that a Christian is bound to believe insomuch as even the Arcana Deitatis the Mysteries of the Trinity of the Hypostatick Union and other the like Divine Abstrusities which poor Mortality is unqualified to contemplate and indeed which Cherubins themselves cannot look into without raptures of holy wonder have hardly escaped their prophanation No far be it from me to entertain a thought of so wild and dangerous a presumption All I durst ever aspire unto is only with pious humility to apply my Reason to such of the Articles in my Creed as seem to be placed within the Sphere of its comprehension Of which sort I conceive the First and Last Article to be viz. the Being of God as Father Almighty and Maker of Heaven and Earth and the Immortality of Mans Soul or Life everlasting Nor indeed need I seek further for my Confirmation in the belief of all the rest when once I have advanced my Understanding to that due height as clearly to behold the Verity of these two Positions that are the Pillars and supporters of all the others Nay I have somtimes thought the Single position of the Immortality of the Human Soul to be the grand Base of Religion and like the Key or midle stone in an Arch which bears the weight of all others in the building For if the Soul be mortal subject to utter dissolution with the body to what purpose doth all Piety and Religion serve What issue can we expect of all our Prayers of all our Adorations of all our Self-denying acts of obedience of all our unjust Sufferings Why should we worship God at all Nay more why should we consider whether there be a God or no For the assurance of his Being could not much conduce to encrease our happinesse in this transitory life since that would then consist only in the full fruition of Sensual pleasures And as for future expectations after death there could be none at all For absolute Dissolution imports absolute Insensibility and what is not cannot be capable of Reward or Punishment of Felicity or Misery What hath not an Existence can ne're know The want of Bliss Nothing can feel no Wo. And from this Consideration was it that I began first to apply my self to search for other Reasons for the eviction of the Souls Eternal subsistence after death besides those delivered in Holy Scripture that conjoyning the evidence and certainty of those desumed from the Light of Nature to that of my former belief arising from the Light of Grace I might be the better able to withstand the Convulsions of my own frailties and convince others who are so refractory as to submit their assent to no inducement of perswasion but what is drawn meerly from Natural Reasons Now for my encouragement and Iustification in this design I need not go far it being well known that many Doctors of the Church and those of the best note both for Learning and Piety have exercised their wits and pens in the same subject and have unanimously concluded that though in the Christian Creed there be sundry Articles concerning the Condition of Mans Soul after its separation from the body which by infinite excesses transcend the capacity of his reason Yet that general one of the perpetual existence of it after death may be satisfactorily evinced by the same reason To mention all the excellent Discourses written by these Church-men and others upon this Argument would be both tedious and unnecessary Especially to you who I presume have perused the greatest part if not all of them It may suffice that I have them for my Precedents both for the warrantablenesse and probability of this my undertaking However if you require farther justification of me I refer you to the undeniable Authority of the Lateran Council held under Pope Leo the tenth Which having decreed the Anathematization of all Atheists who durst question the Being of God or the Immortality of the Human Soul in the close of the Canon not only exhorteth but expressly commandeth all Christian Philosophers to endeavour the demonstration of those sacred Truths by solid and Physical Arguments And certainly so pious and prudent an Assembly would never have prescribed that task in case they had not conceived it both commendable and possible to be effected Lucretius As for the Goodnesse and Piety of your Undertaking truly I think few understanding men will question it and on the other side I fear me you will meet with as few that will acknowledge the Possibility of your accomplishing it For if I am not much mistaken the greatest number of those eminent Doctors of the Church and chiefest of the School-men whom you intimated to have been your examples in this particular do after all their labours and subtle disputes ingenuously confesse that the best of their Arguments are not rigorously Convincing or such as constrain assent as inevitably as Mathematical Demonstrations And if so though I expect to receive as high satisfaction from you as from any who ever gave me the same hopes Yet I humbly begg your excuse if I suspend my belief of your ability to prove the Immortality of mans Soul by Reasons of evidence force requisite to the Conviction of a meer Natural man such as I for this time at least suppose my self to be and such as indeed all men would when they come to examine the strength of Discourses of this nature untill you shall have given me more pregnant testimonies thereof than any Author whose writings I have read hath hitherto done touching this subject In a word I believe the Soul to be Immortal as firmly as you or any person living can Yet I should account it no small felicity to see a perfect Demonstration of it such as might for ever silense all Doubts and Contradictions and make a Convert of my old Master Epicurus in case he were now among the living And any thing lesse than that would hold no proportion to my expectation Athanasius I will
Objects I referr my self to the Noble Isodicastes here who is pleased to assume upon himself the trouble of acting the part of an Arbiter betwixt us in this dispute whether you have been able to dissolve them Isodicastes How unfit I am to have the casting and decisive voice in a matter of this high and abstruse nature I am sufficiently conscious But since you are both pleased to create me judge of this your Debate I shall adventure to give you my sentiments briefly and clearly upon this last Argument of the Soul 's being Immaterial drawn from the unboundedness of the Intellect as to its Object for of the rest I delivered my opinion freely as they were alleaged Truly I judge it to be as highly convincing as any of which the subject is capable And for my owne part I derive to my self from thence a full confirmation of my beleif that there is nothing in the world too vast for the comprehension of mans understanding nothing too small for its discernment and whether such a divine Capacity be competent to any but an Immaterial Essence is not hard to determine Now the Intellect being thus found to be above all conditions of Matter I doubt not but Lucretius will readily allow what you have so learnedly concluded upon viz that the Human soul whose Faculty it is is above all possibility of Dissolution at least from Natural Agents And therefore Athanasius if you are not already weary with discoursing so long and strictly be pleased to proceed to those Moral Considerations importing the souls Immortality which I remember you promised in the beginning Athanasius The Moral Considerations usually brought in defence of the Souls Incorruptibility are Principally Three 1 The Universal Consent of Man kind 2 Mans Innate and Inseparable Appetite of Immortality 3 The Iustice of God in rewarding Good men and punishing evil after death Concerning the First howbeit there ever have been and still are among men some differences about the state of the Soul after death about the place of its posthume Mansion and other circumstances Yet there ever hath been and stil is an Universal concurrence among them in this Tenent that it doth survive the body and continue the same for ever Now as Cicero judiciously observeth Omni in re Consensio omnium gentium Lex Naturae putanda est in every thing the general consent of all Nations is to be accounted the Law of Nature And consequently the Notion of the Soul 's Immortality must be implanted by Nature's own hand in the Mind of every man and who so dares to deny it doth impugne the very principles of Nature Lucretius Your Assumption here that all Nations conspire in the belief of the Souls Eternal subsistence after death is contradicted by many good Authors who writing of certain salvage and barbarous Nations discovered in the New World say of them that their rudenesse and ignorance approacheth so nearly to that of Beasts that they have not the least thought or conceipt of any such thing as the Souls being a distinct substance from the Body or that it is indissoluble And as I remember Pliny affirms the same of the Calaici a wild and Atheistical people of Old Spain Athanasius Granting these relations to be true yet if we profoundly examine wherupon their idolatrous devotion and there never was any Nation without some kind of Religion and Veneration of a Deity is grounded and what dark belief lies blended under their ridiculous worship we shall soon find that those Indians have some implicite belief of the Eternity of their Souls as may appear from hence that they assign the Soul some certain place of residence after its separation from the body and that either beyond the Sea or beyond great Mountains or the like Again being observed to stand in awe of Devils to be terrified with mightly Spectr's and apparitions and to be astonished at Magical impostures it is evident that if we dissect all their perswasion to the bottom we shall detect it to contain an opinion of the Souls Immortality But though it may be true that there are now or formerly have been any such Salvage people as were wholly destitute of any the least thought or hint of the Souls superviving the funerals of the body yet we may return the same Answer concerning them that is due to those who should object that there alwaies have been and now are some particular Persons of all Nations with whom the belief of the Souls Immortality can find no entertainment or credit which is that therefore it doth not follow that the perswasion of its Immortality ought not to be reputed General and that the dissent of a few persons doth not make a General Consent not to be Natural For as though some men are born only with one foot and some lay violent hands upon themselves it is not lawful for us thence to argue that it is not natural to men to have two feet or that the desire of life is not natural to all men So though some are so unsound and monstrous in their judgement as to perswade themselves that their Souls are Mortal yet is not the contrary perswasion of all other men therefore to be esteemed Non-natural Lucretius You cannot be ignorant that there have been not only rude and vulgar heads but even Philosophers and those of sound judgement too who have positively denied and strongly impugned the Immortality of the Soul and among therest my Master Epicurus who hath the reputation of one of the most piercing and sublime Wits among all the Ancients and therefore this position of the Soul 's Incorruptibility seems not to be so Universal as you presume Athanasius But pray consider these Philosophers were but Men and so might erre in their solitary conceipts and opinions as well as the most rude and illiterate among the vulgar as is evident from hence that the same persons held many other opinions of things more obvious and familiar which yet are highly absurd and manifestly ridiculous And what though Epicurus and some few other of the Grecian Scholiarchs asserted the Mortality of the Soul are there not ten times as many others as high in esteem for Solidity and Wit who have with excellent arguments defended the Immortality of it Lucretius Let us leave your Assumption and reflect upon the validity of your Inference Though all men living should be perswaded of the truth of this opinion That the Soul is Superiour to death and corruption yet would it not follow that therefore that perswasion is Natural and Congenial to our very Essence as you conclude For it is not impossible that an Universal perswasion may be erroneous every man living being by the imperfection of his Nature obnoxious to Error and Cicero deriding the vanity of Auspices which in his time were in great esteem among all Kings People and Nations saith quasi quicquam sit tam valde quâm nihil sapere vulgare Is any thing so perfectly common among men
temper and yet his skill in musick never a whit the less why then should you conceive that the soul should be able to conserve the harmony of voluntary motions in the sinewes muscles and members of the body when the requisite tenour of those her instruments is depraved by the stupefactive and relaxing force of the Wine drank in excesse The Members of the body are fit instruments to execute the motions by the Soul impressed upon them but when they are surrounded with the malignant and Narcotical vapours of Wine and thereby relaxed or oppressed they become uncapable of the Souls mandates and government till those vapours being again discussed they have recovered their natural temper and due disposition and yet the Soul it self all that while remain vigorous and strong as in Sobriety contrary to what this your Objection supposeth Lucretius Since you so easily expede your self from the Objections drawn from Diseases and Ebriety I shall urge you with one that seems more tough and knotty and that is this As the Body so also the Soul or Mind is capable of being cured or rectified by the Art of Medicine and if so there must be either an addition to or a detraction of somwhat from the Soul Physick being a Detraction of what is superfluous and an addition of what is deficient in mans Nature And therefore the Soul being capable of addition and detraction is capable likewise of destruction Athanasius Alas Lucretius this is still a branch of the same stock and to it I may easily accommodate an Answer out of what I even now replied to your supposed sympathy of the Soul with the body in some Diseases For albeit it be most true that by Hellebor and other Antimelancholical remedies we Physicians usually cure Madnesse called Insania and Amentia Unsoundness or Distraction of the Mind Yet is it as true that this Cure is wrought only upon the brain or seat of the Imagination which being purged of that adust and blackish humour which oppressed it and altered from the distemper therein caused by the noxious and intoxicating qualities of that humour the Mind doth soon return to perform all its proper Functions as regularly and exactly as at any time before the patient was invaded with that distemper of his brain and depravation of his Phansy So that as when a man go's haulting because one of his shooes is higher than the other we may well enough say that man doth hault though all the cause of his haulting be only the inequality of his shooes and to make him go right again there needs no more but to moke his shooes equally high So when a man haults as it were in his Reason or fails in the evennesse and decorum of his Discourse we may say that man is Unsound or lame in his Mind though that unsoundnesse consist only in his Brain or Imagination and to restore him to the right and becomming manage of his reason there needs no more but to rectify his Phansy or Brain in whose preternatural distemper alone his madnesse doth consist Again forasmuch as there are as it were some certain diseases peculiar only to the Mind at lest in that Metaphorical sense I have already explained And that these depravities commonly called Diseases of the Mind are capable of cure by that which is truly the Physick of the Mind viz. Moral Philosophy Therefore ought we to conceive that as the Mind is subject to those its Affections without any the least detriment or alteration of its substance so also may it be cured of them again without any alteration addition or detraction substantial For since the Diseases of the Mind are nothing else but certain Evill or vitious Habits contracted by custom and those Habits are nothing else but certain Modes or Manners of its standing affected to such or such objects Thence comes it that those Vicious Habits may be sensibly expelled by the induction of contrary Habits that is of Virtuous ones like as a Crooked staffe may be made streight only by bowing it the contrary way And though no similitude be exactly congruous in this case because the Affections of Corporeal Natures hold no correspondence with those of Incorporeals Yet I choose to make use of this of the rectification of a crooked staff because the Crookednesse of the staff doth in some sort represent the Curvity of a Mind misaffected by vicious Habits and the Rectitude of a staff equally represent that Rightnesse of the Mind which is acknowledged in the Soveraignty and Habit of Virtue And thus you see that the Curability of the Mind by the prescripts of Morality doth not import its dissolubility as you infer but rather the Contrary for no Moral precept can be applied to or work upon a Corporeal or Dissoluble essence Lucretius From Diseases and Remedies both of Body and Mind let us have recourse to Death and see if from the manner of its Tyranny we can raise an Objection or two against your opinion of the Souls being naturally exempted from the same It is observed that Men generally die Membratim limb after limb death advancing by sensible degrees from the extream parts to the Central and more noble as if the Soul were not a substance intirely collected into it self or resident in any one particular place of the body as you seem to conceive but diffused and scatter'd in several pieces and so subject to dissipation part after part Athanasius The Solution of this is far from being difficult For conceiving the soul as Incorporeal to be diffused through the whole body not by Extension of bulk but by Replication or as the Schools speak by position of the same Entity in each part of the body it is easy to understand that the soul when the members grow cold and mortified doth then indeed instantly cease to be in them yet is not cut off piece-meal or diminished and so sensibly or gradually dissipated as you suppose but the whole of it remains in so much of the body as yet continues warme and perfused by the vital Heat untill ceasing longer to animate the principal seat or throne of its residence whether the Brain or Heart it at length bid adieu to the whole and withdraw itself intire and perfect What I here say of the Constitution of the whole Soul in the whole body and the whole Soul in every part of the body by way of Replication or Position of the same Entity in divers places at the same time is I confess som what obscure and the imperfection of our knowledge in the affections of Immateriall natures will hardly permit us to illustrate it yet lest you should think it meerly imaginary and sophisticall I may assert the possibility and reasonableness of it by a similitude of an intentional species or visible Image Which all men allow so to be diffused through the whole medium or space as that it is at the same time whole in every part of that space because in what part soever
speculate or understand without Phantasms and therefore it is not likely that the soul is a distinct substance and separable from the body For the ground hereof is false viz that there is no Intellection but what is either direct Imagination or done by Imagination as we have formerly proved and that with no sparing hand so that we need not here repeat it Nor had I here remembred this Argument of Aristotle but that this you now urge is very neer of kin thereunto as to its force and importance and so put me in mind of it afresh Lucretius An Eighth Objection may be made from hence that the Soul being once expired the body soon corrupts stinks and resolves to dust I say expired or like a vapour exhaled through the conduits and pores of the body and therefore so divided into small portions or particles as that in that very Egression or Expiration it must be wholly comparated to Dispersion and what is capable of such dispersion is capable of totall dissolution Athanasius You might well Lucretius have spared yourself and me the trouble of this impertinent objection had you thought my Answer to your Fifth worthy your memory For since you could not then deny that the soul as Incorporeal is diffused through the whole body and therefore may issue out of it intire and unimpaired as possessing no place and in that respect as capable of passing through the solid and compacted parts as through the conduits and pores why should you now resume that gross conception of the Souls expiring from the body like a vapour or exhalation And as for the Putrefaction of the Body after the Soul hath withdrawn itself from it though it nothing at all concern the buisiness in hand I say the Cause thereof is the defect of that vital Agitation of the Heart Blood and spirits by which the Humours most prone to putrifaction were partly kept from subsiding and fermenting and partly so extenuated as to be discussed and expelled Lucretius A Ninth from hence that in Lipothymies or swooning fits the vigour of the Soul is so much abated and brought low as that it would be totally dissolved and extinguished in case the Causes of those its Failings or Dejections were yet more violent as frequently they are and then they cause sudden death Athanasius Here you recur to the Symptomes of bodily Diseases again but I wish I could as easily remove them from the body as you from defending the Mortality of the Soul by any considerations drawn from them and their most fatal effects For as to Lipothymies which according to the Etymologie of the word you call Failings of the Soul they are in truth only Failings of the Heart or vital influence arising from the preclusion or stopping of those passages ordained for the continual transmission of vital Spirits which as servants the Soul makes use of to Life Sense and Motion And therefore reflecting upon what I have already said it is obvious to conceive that the whole Soul being diffused through the whole body all the failing in Swooning fits doth fall not upon her Self but upon the Vital Organs which at that time are rendred unfit for the uses and actions to which they were framed and accommodated And if the Causes of such Failings should chance to be so violent as to induce suddain death then the Soul indeed would and must wholly depart yet not by reason of any dissolution of its substance or exceeding imbecility in it self but only for want of those Dispositions in the Organs of life by which she was enabled to enliven the body And here I could mind you of a certain sort of Lypothymies that happen in Ecstasies of some Holy men when the Soul being transported with the superlative beauty and excellency of Divine Objects in abstracted contemplations doth so much neglect her inferior functions as that the body all that while seems senselesse and livelesse And yet this an argument rather of the strength of the Soul than of any Failing or Defection in it self I could also insist upon this that in sleep there is a kind of Defection of the influence of the Soul upon her corporeal Organs especially those inservient to Sense and Motion and yet the Soul is then most her self as Cyrus long since observed in one of Xenophons Orations in these most elegant words Dormientium Animi maximè declarant Divinitatem suam multa enim eum remissi ac liberi sunt futura prospiciunt ex quo intelligitur quales futuri sint cum se planè corporis vinculis relaxaverint But the Objection being otherwise refuted doth require neither Lucretius Experience teacheth that no man when dying findeth his Soul to depart out of his body whole and at once but rather to fail by degrees within his breast just as he doth his Sense in each proper Organ Which he would not do in case his Soul took her flight whole and intire out of his breast as a bird out of a Cage and therefore it is probable that the Soul being dissolved at the instant of death is breathed out in dispersed Atoms together with the Aer expired from the Lungs Athanasius You must needs be streightned for Objections Lucretius when you fly to uncertain Experiments and incompetent conceptions of vulgar heads and therefore I hope you cannot much longer hold out against truth I say to uncertain experiments because since it is impossible that any man in the extream moment of life wherein his Soul ceaseth to be either in his breast or any other part of his body should say to the standers by Now I am sensible of the egresse or flight of my Soul and I perceive how it departs because while he is able to speak or be sensible of any thing the Soul is still in the body and at the instant of its departure the Speech all Sense fail for ever The experience you alleage is uncertain and so no experience at all To incompetent Conceptions of vulgar heads because the common people not being able to understand the nature of an Incorporeal and how possessing no place no body can hinder its passage or trajection have a certain grosse apprehension that the Soul must issue out of the breast the same way that the breath doth out of the lungs And as for its Dispersion into Atoms you do ill to suppose it to be Corporeal when you have been so often beaten from that starting hole These Impertinences are much below so great a wit as yours Lucretius and I should very much wonder how you could fall upon them but that I ascribe it to your present humour of Contradiction which doth many times transport even wise men themselves to gross extravagancies Lucretius If the Soul were Immortal and conscious of its Immortality as you have affirmed certainly it would not grieve to leave the body which is rather its prison than delightful Mansion but rather rejoyce to be set at liberty and exult as a snake doth to
to your Lordship since from you alone I have received more both of Encouragement and Assistance in my studies than from the whole World beside so that indeed your Right to this Homage I now make to your Lordship doth wholly take away the Freedom of it What I have said My Lord though I fear me scarce agreeable to your severe Modesty is yet fully agreeable with Truth and as wel known as your Name and therefore without offending the Law of Decency as I said afore I ought not to have permitted this Treatise to venture abroad into the common Aer without that Advantage and Protection which your and only your Patronage can give it Nor would Policie have advised me otherwise for albeit among my Readers many may chance to dislike the Book it self yet sure I am most will like it much the better for carrying so illustrious a Name in the Epistle and the severest Criticks cannot but commend my judgement in the Dedication Notwithstanding all these Inducements alleageable in favour of my Boldness I think it safer to cast my self intirely upon your Lordships Charity for a Forgiveness of it than to trust in their importance how grea soever it may seem And therefore without being further rude in disturbing your thoughts from things of more weight and concernment I most humbly beg your Lordships gracious Acceptance of this publick acknowledgment I here make of that infinite Observance and Thankfulness which is due to you from My most Honourd LORD your Lordships most humble most obedient and most faithful Servant W CHARLETON The Errors of the Press that have escaped the Eye of the Corrector though but few and veniall are yet not so soon excused as mended by reading Affectation for affection in the 10. line of the 10. page And for ane in 22. l. of the 25. page Coppices for Coppies in the 2. l. of the 30. page Silence for silense in the 1. l. of the 62. page Contrast for Contract in the 9. l. of the 71. page Demonstrateth it self for demonstrate thits self in the 19. l. of the 72. page Immaterial for immortal in the 1. l. of the 85. page Nightly for mightly in the 14. l. of the 127. page No other encouragment for no other other in the 1. l. of the 138. page Obelisckes for obeliks in the 1. l. of the 139. page Contrast for Contract in the 18. l. of the 153. page Make for moke in the 22. l. of the 165 page An Advertisement to the READER AMong the Ancient Philosophers as you may remember nothing was more frequent than to deliver their opinions and documents as wel Physical as Moral in the plain and familiar way of Dialogue and the Reasons that induced them thereunto are not unworthy consideration For besides the opportunity both of commemorating their worthy Friends and of introducing several occasional and digressive speculations that might be perhaps nor lesse grateful nor lesse useful than the principal Argument proposed they thereby gave themselves the advantage of freely alleaging the various and different Conceptions and Perswasions of Men concerning the subject which they had designed to discuss Which in the stricter method of Positive and Apodictical Teaching they could not with equal conveniency do And how much better we may judge of the truth of any Theorem when we have heard as wel the principal Reasons that impugne as those that assert it is obvious to common observation Hereunto may be added that a Discourse digested into the form of a familiar Conference doth by its variety delight and by its natural freedom and familiarity more gently insinuate it self into the Mind as is assured by Experience New when you have reflected upon these Considerations you clearly understand what were the main Motives which induced the Author of this Treatise to dispose his Collections and solitary Meditations on this excellent subject the Immortality of Mens Souls into a Dialogue consisting of Three Persons the one Propugning another Impugning that most comfortable Tenent and the third impartially Determining their Differences But yet as I have heard He had one inducement more to this manner of writing and that was that being not long since in France and invited to discourse of the same Argument He delivered the substance of all that is here spoken by one of the Interlocutors viz. Athanasius in a free Colloquy betwixt Himself and two of his honour'd Friends as they were recreating and reposing themselves in Luxenburg Garden in Paris So that in the Circumstances of this Confabulation there is nothing of Fiction besides that of Names proper to each of the Speakers And as for those the Parts they bear in the Discourse sufficiently discover their Derivations Henry Herringman The Contents in Scheme The Immortality of the Human Soul is Demonstrated by Reasons 1 Physical desumed from her 1 Operations viz 1. Volition or Willing 1 Her proper most agreeable Object which is Bonum Honestum repugnant for the most part to Bonum Delectabile Sensibile 2 Freely and upon deliberation 2 Intellection 1 Pure or distinct from Imagination 2 Reflex in which she understands her self to be Intellectuall and her owne Intelligence 3 Of Universals abstracted from Singularity Matter 2 Objects which are all things Corporeal Incorporcal those most properly 2 Moral desumed from the 1 Univerall Consent of all Men of all Ages Nations Religions 2 Appetite of Immortality naturally inherent in all men 3 Necessity of Justice Divine Haec ipsa Philosophorum Meditatio est Animum à corpore solvere atque segregare Plato in Phaedo THE IMMORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL Demonstrated by the Light of Nature DIALOGVE THE FIRST The Interlocutors LUCRETIVS ATHANASIVS ISODICASTES Lucretius WEll met my deare and honored Athanasius Thus to encounter you I am sure is more then a good omen It is a happinesse in present Athanasius I wish it may be so Lucretius but when I reflect upon my owne unworthinesse and want of power to be serviceable so my Friends in any proportion to my respects or the honour I receive in their commands I cannot easily be so vaine as to conceive I can be an occasion of Happinesse to you in any kind However let me assure you both of my joy to see you and my readinesse to serve you Lucretius Ah! Athanasius I am already convinc'd of both I am not so unacquainted with the exteriour Characters of the Passions as not plainely to perceive the evidences of joy in your countenance The serenity of your aspect the pleasant smoothnesse of your forhead the vivacity and lustre of your eyes and the unusuall sanguine tincture of your cheeks are perfect demonstrations of that Passion within you which with a sudden yet gratefull violence causeth an effusion of blood and spirits towards the habit of the body as if the Soul impatient of delay and distance dispatch'd those her Emissaries to meet and bring in her beloved object And as for your singular Humanity and generous inclination
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
countermand the effect of the weaker Nor is it difficult to distinguish these two kinds of impulses or motions made by the mediation of the spirits upon the principal sensory or chief seat of the soul. Forasmuch as some of them represent to the soul the Images of objects either at that time moving the senses or the impressions formerly made and remaining in the brain but offer no force or violence to it so far as to engage the will toward their prosecution and others prove so effectual as to dispose the will accordingly as may be observed in all those which produce passions or such motions in the body as usually accompany passions As for the former though they often impede the actions of the soul and are againe as often impeded and suppressed by them yet because they are not directly opposite each to other we can observe no conflict or wrestling betwixt them as we may betwixt the latter sort of Motions and acts of the will or Volitions that oppose them as for example betwixt that impulse by which the principall organ of the soul is disposed to affect her with the cupidity or desire of any one particular object and that by which the will counterdisposeth her to an aversation from or avoydance of the same And this Conflict chiefly demonstrate thits selfe hereby that the will being not able to excite passions directly and immediately is constrained to cast about and use a kind of art in order thereunto and to apply it selfe to the consideration of several things successively or one after another whereupon it comes to passe that if any one of those things occurring chance to be prevalent enough to change the course or current of the spirits at that instant yet another that followes next after it be not powerfull enough to second the former in that change the spirits then immediately againe resume their first course or motion the precedent disposition in the nerves heart and blood being not yet altered and thereupon the soul perceives her selfe to be impelled to pursue and avoid the same object almost in one and the same moment And this alone was that which gave occasion to men to imagine Two Distinct and mutually repugnant Powers or Faculties in the soul. Nevertheless we may conceive another sort of Conflict consisting in this that many times the same cause which exciteth a passion in the soul doth even in the same moment excite also in the body certaine motions to which the soul doth not at all conduce and which she suppresseth or at least indeavours to suppress so soon as she observes them to be begun For instance whatsoever causeth Feare doth at the same instant cause also the spirits to flow into those muscles which serve to move the thighs and legges to flight or avoidance of the terrible object but if the Will suddainly rise up and determine to exercise the vertue of Fortitude and oppose the danger threatned the soul then giveth check to that motion of the spirits and converts them to the heart and armes the better to make resistance And here I ask leave to make a short Digression while with the excellent Des Cartes I observe to you that it is from the Event of these inward Conflicts by which a man may come to understand the strength or weakness of his own soul. For such persons who have their wills sufficiently strong to subdue passions and countermand those suddain motions in the body which accompany the passions are without doubt endowed with Noble and Generous Souls And those who have their wills subject to the impetuosity of passions and cannot check the motions of the spirits resulting from them must be men of abject effeminate and pusillanimous ones Not that every man can make this Experiment of himselfe as to Weaknesse or Fortitude because many and indeed most men come to these Duells armed not with the true and proper weapons of the mind but with false ones borrowed from some contrary Affection so that the conflict may seem to be rather betwixt two opposite Passions than betwixt the Will and either of them and the Will may be said to follow the fortune of the conquering passion rather than to be it selfe the conquerour By the true and proper weapons of the Mind I meane certaine right and firme judgments concerning the knowledge of Good and evill according to which it hath decreed to regulate it self in all the actions and occurrences of life And certainly of all Souls those are the most weak and feminine which have not their wills thus determined to follow certaine settled Judgements but suffer them to be drawn aside by present Affections which being many times contrary one to another and equally prevalent counter-incline the Will alternately and so keep it on the rack of suspence Thus when Feare representeth Death as the worst of evils and which cannot be otherwise avoided but by flight if on the other side Ambition step in and represent the infamy of flight as an Evill worse then Death these two contrary Affections variously agitate and distract the Will and by putting it to a long conflict and irresolution render the soul most servile and miserable Now from this consideration it is manifest that there is no such necessity as hath been imagined of allowing a distinction of the soul into Animum and Animam or making the Reasonable soul and the Sensitive two distinct beings in order to the explanation of that Psychomachy or Contest betwixt Reason and Sense or the Superior and Inferior Faculties of which the Apostle complained and indeed which every man feels within himselfe all that repugnancy consisting in a Contrariety not of the soul to it selfe which in a Simple Essence is impossible but onely of the Motions of the spirits caused by the Senses on one side and those caused by the Will on the other as hath been declared And as for the other Reasons that remaine what I have now said may be easily extended to the solution of them also for that Man is composed of a Reasonable Soul and a Body is sufficient to our understanding him to be in one respect little lower than the Angells made after the Image of God and Immortall and in another like the Horse and Mule that have no understanding and subject to death equally with the beasts that perish Isodicastes By your favour good Athanasius You were saying even now that there were some Fathers and Councils who condemned all such as maintained a Duality of Souls in Man But if I am not mistaken that condemnation doth cheifly concern the Maniches who held two distinct Souls in every man the one derived from an evill Principle and so contaminated with the tincture of Vices the other immaculate pure and having its origine immediately from God yea being a certain Particle of the Divine Essence it self And perhaps it may be extended also to the Platonist and Averrhoist who affirm the Ratitional Soul not to be the Forma informans
and so make two forms in every individual person both which opinions are erroneous and hereticall But that it doth include also those who distinguish the Soul into a Superior and Inferior part the one comprehending the Mind Intellect or Reason only the other the Sensitive Faculties and Appetites I am yet to learn Which I advertise you of not that I am unsatisfied with the reason you have given of those Conflicts we daily have within us For in truth it seems conveniently to explain the mystery of that Repugnancy betwixt our Rational and Corporeal Appetites but to intimate to you that I see no reason why the Human Soul may not be admitted to consist of two parts the one Immaterial and Intellectual called the Mind or Understanding and by way of excellency the Human Soul the other Material and only Sensitive by the mediation whereof that Divine part is united to the body during life And without admitting this Distinction I do not understand the meaning of that Sentence of Plato Mentem recipi in Anima Animam in corpore nor of that of Trismegistus or whoever was the Author of Poemander Mentem in Animam Animam in Spiritu Spiritum in corpore vehi Both which not obscurely intimate a certain Third Nature in Man intermediate between that Divine essence his reasonable Soul that Material or Elementary one his body which can be no other but what we call the Sensitive part of the Soul Athanasius Whether that condemnatory Sentence mentioned doth extend to such as hold the Reason to be one part of the Soul and the Sensitive power to be another in this moderate sense you are pleased to state it I will not much contend it being the proper businesse of Divines to determine that doubt But thus much I am certain of that it expresly toucheth all who assert a Duality of Souls Coexistent in man and that is enough I presume to justifie my quotation of it against them As for those remarkable texts of Plato and the great Hermes which you alleage I answer that it is very probable that those Philosophers who held the Soul to be Composed of two different Natures as these seem to have done had for their principal argument that intestine Repugnancy we have explained and that nothing can be contrary to it selfe Now their ground or Supposition that this Repugnancy is in the Soul it self or betwixt the Reasonable part and the Sensitive and not betwixt the Soul and Body only as I have clearly proved it to be being manifestly erroneous Assuredly their Inference cannot be longer considerable Neverthelesse if what I have already urged be not sufficiently clear and valid rather than shew my self so vain an Opiniator as to put my judgement into the ballance against so solid a one as yours I am content you should continue the possession of your present perswasion till you shall please to afford me some other opportunity of demonstrating the Unity and Simplicity of the Soul My present undertaking being only to evince the Immortality of it and this more out of compliance to Lucretius importunity than any confidence of singular ability in my self to mannage so noble and weighty an Argument If therefore I have not already discouraged your patience permit me now to apply my self wholly to that Province The Considerations which I have designed to alleage at this time in favour of the Souls Immortality are either Physical or Moral And the Physical or such as arise from the Nature of the Soul it self seem all to refer themselves to this one Capital Argument The Reasonable Soul of Man is Immaterial and therefore Immortal Here notwithstanding the main Difficulty be concerning the Antecedent yet convenience of Method requires me first to manifest the Force or Necessity of the Consequence The Reason therefore why what is Immaterial must also be Immortal is deduceable from hence that what wants Matter wants likewise parts into which it might be distracted and dissolved and what is uncapable of being dissolved must of perfect necessity alwayes continue to be what it is For whatever is of a nature free from the conditions of Matter or Body doth neither carry the principles of dissolution in it selfe nor fear them from External Agents and by pure consequence cannot but perpetually last or which is the very same be Immortall And this Reason seems to me both most evident and ineluctable Lucretius I perceive no such unavoidable Necessity For though an Immateriall thing cannot perish by the Exsolution of parts which is the only way by which all Corporeall natures are destroyed yet it is not impossible but the same may be destroyed some other way proper to Incorporealls and unknown to us Forasmuch as what ever is Principiate or once produced must have some cause of its production and then why may it not be againe destroyed by the selfe same Cause or by an action of that Cause contrary to that action by which it was at first produced Athanasius There are but two wayes comprehensible by the Understanding how any thing that hath existence in nature can perish the one is as I have already expressed by the Exsolution and Dissipation of its parts of which it was composed the other by absolute Adnihilation of its Entity as the Schoolmen phrase it Now though I confesse that as the former way of destruction is peculiar to Corporeall natures so I know nothing to the contrary but the Latter may be competent to Incorporeals which are produced ex nihilo for every dependent or what hath not its Being from its selfe but deriveth it from another is liable at the pleasure of that on which it doth depend to be deposed from that essence or state of Being in which it was by the same created yet that there is any such thing as Adnihilation though consistent with the Omnipotence of God is hardly conceiveable without derogation from his wisedome which pronounced all to be good that he had made and the formal reason of the Creatures goodnesse doth consist only in this that it seem'd good to the Divine will so to make them and to argue à posse ad esse that God doth or will adnihilate any thing because it is in his power to adnihilate is much below so good a Logician as Lucretius is Nor are we to suppose any Innovation in the generall state of things but that the course of the Universe or Nature doth constantly and invariably proceed in the same manner or tenour of method which was at first instituted by the wisedome of the Creator There is you know a twofold Immortality the one Absolute the other only Derivative That the First is competent onely to God cannot be denyed since it is impossible that that essence which is Non-principiate or never had beginning nor any Cause of its production should be determined or ever cease to be or meet with any cause of its destruction And that the latter may be competent to the whole Genus
congenial Motives or incitements of the Soul are abstracted Considerations as hope of what is to come of Eternity Memory of what is past Virtue Honour and the like which arise not from material principles and have no commerce with Elementary compositions Now if the Understanding were not it self purely Immaterial it would be absolutely impossible for it ever so much as to suspect much lesse to know assuredly that there were any such things as Incorporeals in the Universe The Reason being obvious from that rule of Aristotle juxtim apparens prohibet alienum For as the eye when discoloured with a yellow humour in the jaundice can see no Object but it appears tincted with the same colour So could not the Intellect perceive any other but Corporeal Natures if it self were not only perfused with but wholly and intirely immersed into Corporiety so that of necessity it must be Incorporeal Lucretius Me thinks now you might with equal reason inferr the quite Contrary viz. that the Intellect could not have any perception of Corporeal Natures if it self were not likewise Corporeal there being required some kind of proportion and compossibility betwixt the Faculty percipient and the Object perceptible as is exemplified in each of the Senses which is the sole reason of their opinion who contend that the Sensitive part of the Soul is Material Athanasius I positively deny that Lucretius For since the Order or Degree of Incorporeal is superior to that of Corporeal thence it follows that by virtue of that its superiority or excellency it possesseth all the perfections of the inferior and that in a more eminent manner So that as the degree Animal being nobler than the degree meerly Vegetable doth in a more excellent proportion and manner comprehend Vegetation or Nutrition Accretion and Generation which are the functions of the Vegetable In like manner doth the degree Spiritual or Incorporeal being more noble and perfect than the meer Animal and Corporeal comprehend cognition Corporeal or Sensation and Imagination which are the functions proper to the degree Animal And thus you see that my inference of the Intellect's capacity to know Incorporeal essences from its own being a Spiritual Faculty is genuine and orderly but yours of its being Corporeal from its capacity to know Corporeals is false and preposterous Lucretius But may not I lawfully object that we do not conceive God or Angells or Intelligences as Immaterial Substances when we find in our selves that the mind doth alwaies speculate the Divine Essence it self under some Species of a Body and though not of a Human Body which yet is most usual yet of an aereal or ethereal one or somwhat more fine and subtile if any such there be Athanasius You may make this Objection there is no doubt but it will not be sufficient to prevail against what I have urged concerning the Intellect's extensibility even to God and other Intellectual essences For the understanding though it make use of those Phantasms that are proper to the Imagination as the means or degrees by which it mounteth it self up to a sublimity above all Corporeal species doth yet by ratiocination at length attain to that height as to be ascertained that beside all body of whatsoever thinness purity and subtility there is moreover a certain supereminent substance which hath nothing of Corporiety in it The Intellect I confess doth not positively or intuitively as they say know this Substance but since this is its condition while immersed in a body which doth as it were infect it with corporeal representations or Phantasms and eclipse its power of Intuition it is abundantly sufficient to our Conclusion that even in this mortal body it doth retein and conserve its incorporeal nature that it doth understand that substance Negatively or Abstractively For this investigation or search after God and our concluding him out of the force of contradiction or by way of Negation to be Eternal Infinite Omnipotent Omniscient Immutable with all other perfections imaginable essential to his nature doth clearly demonstrate that though the Intellect be obliged to make use of Corporeal images in order to its knowledge yet it is not obliged to acquiesce in them so as to enquire no further but hath such a liberty and energy as tht it doth ratiocinate beyond them and conclude that there is somewhat else in being which cannot be represented by any Corporeal Image or species and which though it cannot understand what it is in the fullness of its nature yet is it certain that such a nature there is and more than that is not required to justify my Assertion You may remember how Aristotle and other great Philosophers asserted the existence of Caelestial Intelligences Abstracted Movers and Immaterial Substances not that they could see them with the eye of the body or frame any Idea's of them in their Imagination but that by profound reasoning from the magnitude forme situation motion and duration of the Celestial bodies they came to understand that in nature there could not but be such Abstracted and Immaterial Movers which governed and continually regulated those vast and glorious Orbs in their Admirable and well ordered Motions Lucretius If what you say were true it would follow that in diseases of the brain and such as cause a depravation of the Phansy the Intellect as being more at liberty to exercise its faculty of pure and abstracted intellection would arise to the cognition of Immaterial things with more facility and promptness than at any other time But we daily see that men of disturbed Phansies and alienated minds as the vulgar phrase is are so far from understanding more clearly and distinctly than before that they cannot reason at all and it was not without cause that some Philosophers have held that a man deprived of any one of his senses can not rightly discourse of that sense or the objects belonging to it Athanasius You have no reason to urge this upon me for I formerly rejected that error of the Averrhoist that the Soul is a Forme meerly Assistent and in its functions altogether independent upon the body and what I averr is this that the soul of Man doth truely and intirely informe the body and to that purpose nature hath added senses and Imagination as handmaids to attend it in its operations and to give it opportunities of reasoning from what they bring in So that it ought not to seem strange that upon the loss of a sense or perturbation of the Phansy men cannot reason so exactly as before and it sufficeth that when the whole oeconomy of mans nature is in tune and order his understanding is capable of reasoning so as to advance itself above the body as far as is permitted to its nature and at length to conclude that there is somewhat Incorporeal And now I have recited all the Arguments which I thought most material towards the proof of the Soul's Immortality drawn from considerations Physical and in particular from the souls Operations and
fee for a Cure and the like For if virtue or the doing of a good action be a competent reward to its self it must be as I say manifest injustice to require or receive any other The same likewise may be said of Vice For no man that doth an ill action fears only least that ill should torment him but fears somthing beyond it and consequent upon it as infamy imprisonment torture and death And these truly are more congruous punishments for vice than vice itself otherwise all Lawes would be unjust that inflict them We may conclude therefore that since virtue doth frequently want its due reward in this life and vice as frequently goe without its due punishment it followes that after death there is to succeed a certain immortal state in which both shall receive their due Lucretius Granting all this to be necessary in respect of Justice Divine yet I can see no necessity why the Rewards of the Virtuous and Punishment of the Vicious should be Eternal For no Human action though highly good and commendable can yet be so meritorious as to deserve an Eternal recompence from God as on the other side no action though superlatively criminal and detestable can yet be so bad as to require an everlasting punishment because neither the one nor the other is any thing but natural transitory and definite and so can hold no proportion to what is infinite Athanasius Though a Good action and so Virtue and Honesty considered Physically be but a slender thing yet because the worth or Merit of it is to be estimated according to the rule of Morality it comes to be of such excellency as that the Doer thereof freely and upon election endeavouring to compose and regulate himself by the best rules prescribed and so ennobling his actions with divine perfection as much as the frailty of his nature will permit may in justice hope for a reward proportionable i. e. an Eminent and Divine one such to which the Soul by its inherent appetite and tendency doth continually aspire And this reward cannot be other but Everlasting because if it were only Temporal and Finite it could not deserve the name of a reward insomuch as the Fear of being once deprived of it again though after many myriads of years would destroy the pleasure of enjoying it And the like may be said of the perpetuity of Punishments due to vicious persons so that there is no such disproportion as you surmise And here if you please let us set bounds to our Debate concerning the Immortality of that noble Essence the Human Soul For having run over the principal Physical Arguments that arise from the Operations of the Soul aswell in Volition as Intellection and also from the Nature and Universality of her Objects and added thereunto other Moral Considerations of high importance in order to the Conviction of this most comfortable and sacred Truth whose Assertion in obedience to your yesterdayes commands I assumed upon myself I find the clue of all my Notions and Collections concerning this sublime subject now wholly unravelled Nor after my solution of all your Scruples and Objections doth any thing remain for me longer to exercise your patience withall but only that I beg of you both your forgiveness in that I have thus long abused it already and that I render my thanks to you Lucretius for the advantage you were pleas'd to give me by your most ingenious and learned Opposition as you saw occasion in the process of my Discourses and to you Isodicastes for your most impartial and judicious turning the scales on the side of truth as often as Lucretius thought or seemed to think them equilibrated betwixt his reasons and mine Isodicastes If I have been so happy Athanasius as to judge according to truth I assure you it was the clearness of your Reasonings alone that gave me light so to do and therefore instead of that Forgiveness of your exercise of my patience as you call it which your modesty makes you require of me I must return you infinite thanks for your so fully compensating my patience and attention with such satisfaction as greater ought not to be expected concerning an argument of so much abstrusity and difficulty as this whereupon you have discoursed And for Lucretius I think it now time for him to lay aside his disguise of a Contrary opinion which he put on only to experiment the strength of your Allegations for I must declare that in my judgement which yet I doe not take to be definitive he hath been too weak for you in all the passages of this contest yet rather from the weakness of the Cause he undertook than from any want of skill in himself to manage it to the utmost of its merit Lucretius We have yet an hour good before supper time and you were both pleased to devote this whole Evening to this particular Divertisement And therefore if Athanasius be not tired with speaking nor you Isodicastes with hearing let me beseech you to continue your places a little longer while I propose some certain Objections long since made by Epicurus and some of my Fellow-Disciples against the Immortality of Mans Soul For until Athanasius hath perfectly refuted them also if he thinks to Triumph it will be before he hath compleated his Victory Athanasius You are a politick Enemy Lucretius it seems like experienced Generals you place your chiefest strength in a Reserve But come draw up the remainder of your forces I doubt not of as good successe in the second charge as I have had in the first Isodicastes But pray Gentlemen let me conjure you both not to extend your Contract beyond eight a clock for at that hour I have appointed my Cook to furnish us with a short repast and my Watch saith it is almost seven already Lucretius Lesse than an hour will conclude our quarrel I promise you Isodicastes but lest we lose time in preparatory circumstances I immediately addresse to the proposal of my intended Objections which have alwaies hitherto been accounted of of moment The First is this that the Soul is generated grows up to maturity then again declines grows old and at length wholly decaies together with the body So that if that Axiome be true quitquid natum est possit interire the Soul being produced must be subject to dissolution Athanasius This Argument hath two parts the one supposing that the Soul is Generated The other that it grows old and languid and decaies as the body doth and therefore I shall divide my Answer accordingly To the First part I reply that that Axiome quicquid natum est possit interire is true indeed concerning all things Corporeal and Compound but not concerning things Incorporeal and Simple such as I have already demonstrated the Soul to be so that the Production of the Soul doth not necessitate her Dissolubility That Incorporeal Natures are incapable of destruction I have formerly deduced from their want of parts into which
they might be dissolved all exsolubility consisting wholly in Partibility And that Simple Natures are likewise incorruptible is manifest even from hence that the General and First Matter though Corporeal and produced from nothing by God at first doth persevere the very same for ever So that Dissolubility belonging neither to Incorporiety nor Simplicity it is purely consequent that the Soul which is an essence Incorporeal and Simple cannot be obnoxious to Dissolution And as to the Production of it though it be not easie for us especially at the first thought to conceive how an Incorporeal can be produced without perfect creation from which we have good cause to believe that God long since desisted yet that the Soul is produced we have the perswasion of sundry good reasons As if it were improduct or eternal à parte ante it would and must be so either as Coherent by it self and a substance sejoyned or severed from all other things or as a part adhaerent to another and deduced from that other when it is induced into the body But that it is not a substance cohaerent per se ab aeterno may be inferred from hence that there is remaining in us no memory of any such eternal state that the University of things would want beginning and so could have neither Author nor Governour which is monstrous and absurd as I have demonstrated in my Book against Atheism that if Men had been from all Eternity they must have been Infinite and so either there must have been an infinite multitude of Souls before all excogitable time or the same numerical Souls must have by transmigration been inservient to or informed successively not only many but infinite persons when yet it is repugnant that there should be an infinite number lest therein should be admitted as many Binaries Denaries Millenaries c. as Unities and so somthing be allowed more infinite than an infinite which is absurd And that our Souls were formerly in other men who lived before us we have no monument no record but those Fables of Pythagoras Empedocles and the like And that it is not a Particle desumed from another incorporeal is demonstrable from hence that an Incorporeal is uncapable of division into parts Which reason is so plain and obvious that I cannot but wonder that Plato having asserted God to be a Mind Divine and Incorporeal should neverthelesse contradict himself in affirming that Mans Soul was a Particle taken from the substance of God himself or how he could imagine the Soul to be Inexsoluble which he thought a part of an exsoluble nature Wherefore seeing the Soul cannot possibly be Improduct either of these two waies and certainly there can be no other it must of necessity be Product whatsoever the Manner of its Production be And here I might as I suppose you expect I should take occasion to engulph my self in that bottomlesse Sea of Difficulties concerning the Original and Extraduction of Mans Soul but being digressive from my present Theme and such whereof I am not yet able to give any other account than what you have met with in Sennertus Harvey and other modern Physicians who have more expresly addicted themselves to enquire into the mysteries of Generation I think it prudence to wave the opportunity Only thus much I may adventure to say and it is pertinent to my businesse in hand that the Production of the Soul cannot be from Matter because she is her self Immaterial nor from an Incorporeal by way of desumption or partition because Incorporiety and Divisibility are incompatible So that they are not altogether destitute of reason who conceive that it is produced ex Nihilo and by such a Cause whose power is immense and superior to all the Energy of of Nature which must be God the Author of Nature But however it is plain that though it hath its beginning and origine together with the body yet being Incorporeal it is not capable of perishing together with it as you would conclude And thus much for the First part of your Argument As for the Remainder of it to that Aristotle hath long since provided an Answer to my hand in the fourth Chapter of his first Book de Anima which is a Text very apposite and memorable however it either import a Contradiction in the Author himself or seem capable of their interpretation who alleage him as a defendant of the Mortality of the Soul and therefore I shall recite it Innasci autem Intellectus videtur substantia quaedam esse nec corrumpi nam si corrumperetur quidem id maximè fieret ab hebetatione illa quae in senectute contingit nunc autem res perinde fit ac in ipsismet sensuum instrumentis Si enim Senex oculum juvenilem reciperet non secus ac ipse juvenis videret Unde senectus non ex eo est quod quidquam passa Anima sit sed quod simile aliquid ac in ebrietate morbisque eveniat ipsaque intelligendi contemplandi functio propter aliquid aliud interius corruptum marcescit cum ipsum interim cujus est passionis expers maneat Which words considered we have good reason to afffirm that all that change which the Epicurean would have to be in the Rational Soul or Mind during the growth of the body in youth and decay of it in old age doth not proceed from any mutation in the Soul it self but in some other interior thing distinct from it as the Imagination or Organ of the Common Sense the Brain which being well or ill affected the Soul it self suffereth no whit at all but only the Functions of it flourish or decay accordingly For since the Intellect is enshrined in the body for only this end that it might collect the Knowledge of things by the intercession of the Phansy into which the images of things are conveyed through the Senses and that in order to its reasoning concerning them it might receive hints from those images which residing in the Phansy are therefore as we have said called Phantasms hence is it that the Soul in the beginning of its age or during Childhood doth reason but little because it hath then but few images or phantasms in store from which it might take occasion of composing discourses but in processe of time it comes to ratiocinate more copiously and perfectly as having then both more and more clear and ordinate Phantasms and lastly in decrepite old age it again falls to reason but little and brokenly because by reason of the drinesse of the brain the Phantasms are then either wholly or for the most part obliterated and those few that remain are represented both obscurely and perturbedly So that as Aristotle saith if it were possible to give an old man a young Eye and a young Imagination his Soul would soon declare by exquisite vision and quick reasoning that it was not she that had grown old but her Organs and that she is capable of no more change
from the impairment of the body by old age than is usually observed to arise pro tempore from a fit of drunkennesse or some disease of the brain For as when the malignity of the Spirits of Wine is overcome by sleep and dispelled by sweat or the violence of a disease possessing the brain or seat of reason is abated a man doth no longer suffer a delirium but returns to the clear use of his reasoning Faculty as before his head was disordered So if the Brain and Phansy were youthfully affected in an old man the Soul would no longer seem to doat but reason as perfectly as ever before in the vigour and flourishing state of youth From whence it is evident that whatever of change men have thought to be in the Soul by reason of that great decay generally attending old age is not really in the Soul but only in the Imagination and the Organ thereof which is not so well disposed as in the vigour of life And this might be conveniently explained by the similitude of a Scribe who cannot write so smooth and fine a hand with an old and blunted pen as with a new and sharp one But the thing is of it self too clear to need the illustration of Comparisons And this may suffice to dissolve your mighty Argument objected Lucretius My SECOND Argument is desumed from hence that the Soul is not only distempered and misaffected with diseases of her owne but infected and touch't also by those of the body and what is capable of disease or misaffection either protopathically or sympathically is doubtless capable of dissolution This you may remember was long since urged by Panaetius of Epicurus sect for Cicero primo Tuscul. speaking of him saith alteram autem rationem affert nihil esse quod dole at quin id aegrum esse quoque possit quod autem in morbum cadat id etiam interiturum dolere autem Animos ergo etiam interire Athanasius As for such Diseases of the body which you suppose extend to the discomposure of the Soul by way of sympathy as particulary the Phrensy Madnesse Hypochondriacall Melancholy the Lethargy Hydrophobia and others which work upon the brain and perturb the Animal Faculties the same Answer will serve to exempt the Soul from suffering any detriment from them which I just now alleaged against her decay in old age For though in truth the Mind cannot exercise its proper functions duely and rightly in fits of Delirium the Phrensy and the like nor at all in Lethargies and Apoplexies yet this ought not to be ascribed to any depravation or change in the substance of the Mind itself but only to an indisposition in the Phansy and Animal Organs And as for Passions of Grief Fear Remorse c. which are reputed the proper Diseases of the Mind in the first place we may derive our Answer concerning them from the place of Aristotle newly cited For he there subjoyns Amores odium alia passiones esse non intellectûs sed corporis ipsum habentis esse enim fortè Intellectum aliquid divinum passionis expers By which his meaning is that the proper Function of the Intellect is to understand and reason though he was pleased to reckon Cogitation among the Passions and that all Passions belong to the Appetite either Concupiscible or Irascible which is a Corporeal Faculty For though Passion be posterior to Cognition and dependent thereupon so that it may seem to be received in the subject to which Cognition doth belong that is to the Mind nevertheless because the Mind while resident in the body doth make use of corporeal Images pre-admitted into the Imagination and in the mean while the Phansy in imagining what things are doth co-operate together with the Mind and the motion of the Corporeal or Sensitive Faculty followeth after the perception of objects by the Phansy thence it comes that the whole Commotion or Passion doth belong to the Appetite and Body the Mind all that while remain free and unmoved after the same manner as a Master and servant travelling together the servant carries the burden and the Master goes light and free and unconcerned in the weight and trouble thereof But forasmuch as we must admit a certain Appetite properly competent to the Soul itself viz. the Rational Appetite from the name of its action usually denominated the Will by which we find ourselves secretly inclined and carried towards things Honest and Divine and which ought to remain in the Soul even after death since it must then be sensible either of pleasure in the state of felicity or of pain in the state of misery therefore I confess we cannot deny but there are some certain Motions in the Soul itself which in respect of the analogy they seem to hold to those of the sensual or Corporeal Appetite and that we cannot otherwise express them may well enough be called Passions yet these are not to be conceived to arise from any dilatation compression solution of continuity and the like violent motions that might adferr any harme or detriment to the substance of the Soul Nor indeed ought this to seem strange or difficult in a thing that is Incorporeal since even among Corporeals we observe some that have a substance unalterable and so inconsumable by the most violent motions in Nature as Gold Amianthus and the like and that Aristotle makes the substance of Heavenly bodies such as that it cannot be altered heated or dissolved by the heat of the Sun as all sublunary bodies are Lucretius What think you then Athanasius of Drunkeness wherein both the Rational Faculty is highly perturbed and the Motive as much enfeebled neither of which could be if the Soul did not suffer from the violence of the wine and what is capable of suffering such damage from external causes cannot be incapable of totall dissolution from the same in case their force and activity become more intense Therefore the soul is Mortal Athanasius Why truly I think this Argument as light and trivial as your former and that the same solution will serve to both For it is not the Mind which is overwhelmed with the deluge of Wine but the brain and seat or instrument of the Phansy whose images being beclouded and confused by the fumes or spirits of the wine brought thither by the arteries it is impossible the Mind should make use of them with that clearness and distinction as when they were pure and in order And as for that general weakness which remaines for a while after the drunken fit is over in all the members of the body this is not to be referred to the Mind neither but to the Motive-Faculty whose instruments and principally the Nerves are then misaffected and in a manner relaxed so as they become indisposed to the regiment of the Mind The best Lutenist in the world you know cannot play a tune upon a Lute whose strings are relaxed by moisture or otherwise altered from their requisite
of the space the eye of the spectatour be posited the whole Image is still visible therein Now if this manner of total diffusion without fraction or division be competent to the visible species which is Corporeal as I have amply proved in my Physiology where I treated expresly of the nature of Vision certainly it must with more reason be competent to the Soul which is Incorporeal And as for what you observe of the gradual encroachment of Death and the sensible mortification of one limb after another beginning at the feet and other extremities of the body and creeping along to the heart the reason thereof is only this that the Vital Heat or Flame being almost either suffocated by putrefaction of the blood the only fewel by which it is maintained in Diseases or exhausted by old age goes out like a Lamp by degrees ceasing first to enliven or irradiate the parts that are most remote from the Focus or Heart and then failing in its conserving influence more and more untill at length suffering a total extinction in the very Heart as it were in the socket it leave that also cold and livelesse So that Death is an extinction only of the Vital Flame not of the Soul which as Solomon calls it is the brightnesse of the Everlasting Light the unspoited mirrour of the power of God and the Image of his Goodnesse and being but one she can do all things and remaining in her self she maketh all things new Lucretius There is another Argument of the Soul's Mortality drawn from hence that the Soul is as well a part of the Body as the Eye Ear or the other Sensitive Organs But these are no sooner separated from the whole than they become incapable of all Sense And therefore the Soul when once separate from the Body must likewise become destitute of Sense Athanasius The Mind or Soul cannot without great impropriety be said to be a part of the Body as the Eyes and Ears and other Organs of Sense are insomuch as these belong to the Integrality of the Body and the Soul belongs to the Integrality of the Totum Compositum and is the Essence or Form of Man And the Soul indeed is in them all and in all the rest of the Body but none of them is in the Soul So that for this reason alone you ought not to conceive a parity betwixt the Soul and the Instruments of sense as to their incapacity of Sensation after their division from the body being the Soul is the very Principle of Sense and the Organs can have no Sensation without Her But not to insist upon this I deny the Soul to be a part as the instruments of sense are because otherwise than those all are she is Incorporeal and is to her self and hath both in her self and from her self the principle of all her actions and energy which none of those can pretend to For she doth not borrow or derive from any other principle her power of Understanding or Reasoning as the eye doth its Faculty of seeing the Ear its faculty of Hearing but hath it immediately and solely from her self and therefore it is no wonder if the Eye or Ear once disjoyned from the body can see nor hear no longer c. but the Soul when separated from the body can understand and Reason of and within her self Lucretius But pray Sir reflect a little upon this that the Soul and Body are mutually connected and as it were United by so neer a relation or Necessitude as that look how the body being once destitute of the soul can no longer performe any vital Action so neither can the soul when once departed from the body and mixt with the Aer performe any action vital or Animal unless you please to give yourself the liberty of imagining that she doth then animate that part of Aer in which she doth take up her new lodging and of that forme herself instruments fit for the execution of her faculties Athanasius However the Conjunction of the Soul and body be very intimate and the most part of vital and Animal actions belong to the Totum Compositum or whole Composition yet from thence it doth not follow that though the body be incapable of any of those actions without the Soul therefore the in capacity is reciprocall and the soul can doe no actions without the body because the soul is the Principle of life and activity to the body but not the contrary When we behold a souldier fighting with a sword or other weapon we cannot justly say that when he is deprived of those weapons he can no longer strike a blow because though his weapons be gone he hath still his armes and hands wherewith he can strike when and as often as he pleaseth So when the Soul is every way provided of Members and Organs as it were with a Panoplie or complete armour and therewith performs several actions vital and Animal we cannot say that if once it devest itself of that armour and become naked it can no longer exercise its proper functions of Intellection and Ratiocination because though the instruments by the mediation whereof she doth commonly understand and reason in the body be taken away yet still she retains her Faculties Nor will it be therefore necessary that when the soul is departed from the body and breathed forth into the Aer as you with the vulgar seem to conceive that aer should be thereby Animated because it is essential to it then to act i. e. to understand and reason without the mediation of any organs at all and neither in the aer nor any other body whatever can the soul either meet with or create those dispositions that are requisite to vital information This Comparison I have here made betwixt the Soul and a Souldier is I confess incongruous as to the point of Information yet it holds with conveniency enough as to the point of Operation and your question doth chiefly concerne that the weapons of the souldier are as much dead and useless instruments without the hands that are to manage them as the members of the body are without the Soul and as these are Animated by the soul so are those in a manner Animated by the hands of the Souldier And this may be extended also to the solution of that so famous an Objection of Aristotle 1. de Anim. 8. where he saith Esse quidem Animam separabilem si aliquam functionem habeat quam sine corpore exerceat v. c. Intellectionem quae est ipsius maxime propria si modo ea quaepiam Imaginatio non sit aut sine Imaginatione fiat necesse autem est eum qui speculatur speculari simul aliquod phantasma Ergo c. The soul is to be accounted separable if it hath any function which it can exercise without the body namely Intellection provided that be not a certain kind of Imagination or can be performed without Imagination but experience testifieth that no man can
it reasonable that an Incorporeal should be conjoyned to a Corporeal But suppose you really cannot conceive it reasonable must it therefore be unreasonable when so many and so eminent Philosophers have understood and allowed the reasonableness of this Conjunction What think you in the first place of Plato Aristotle and all their sectators who unanimously held the Anima Mundi or Universal Soul and that being diffused through all parts of the Universe it associateth and mixeth itself with all things and totam intus agitat molem And then what think you of those words of the great Hermes quoted by Lactantius when discoursing of the Nature of Man and how he was Created by God he saith Ac idem ex utraque natura immortali putà ac mortali unam hominis naturam texebat ipsum quadamtenus immortalem quadamtenus mortalem faciens ac eundem accipiens in medio quasi interstitio heinc divinae immortalisque illeinc mortalis obnoxiaeque mutationi naturae constituit ut in omnia intuens omnia miraretur And thus Trismegistus from whence it came that Man was esteemed as it were the Horizon of the Universe in whom Supreme natures are joyned to the most Low and the Heavenly to the Earthy and this with admirable correspondency and as beseems the perfection of the Universe because since there are some Natures purely Incorporeal and Immortal and others purely Corporeal and Mortal that these Extremes might not be without a Mean nothing seems more congruous than that there should be a certain sort of third Natures so mixed and compound of both the others as to be Incorporeal and Immortal on one part and Corporeal and Mortal on the other Again whereas you imagine it absurd that natures so extremely different should concur to constitute one Composition I beseech you Lucretius are not Heat and Cold white and black as different each from other as Immortal and Mortal and yet you see they are often conjoyned together so as that a Middle or Third nature doth result from their union as in particular warme from Heat and Cold and Grey or browne from white and black Nay there seems so much the less repugnancy betwixt Immortal and Mortal Incorporeal and Corporeal natures by how much they are the less Different and Incompossible because they are only as it were Disparate among themselves and capable of conserving a whole nature but Heat and Cold Whiteness and Blackness are absolute Contraries and cannot consist together without reciprocal destruction or maintain a durable Union And thus much for the First part of your Demand viz the Possibility of a Conjunction betwixt an Incorporeal and a Corporeal Nature As for the remainder viz what is the Common Medium Cement or Glew by which two such different natures are married and united into one Compositum I Answer that I conceive it to be the Blood especially the spiritual and most elaborate or refined part thereof according to that ancient opinion of Critias Sentire maximè proprium esse Animae atqe hoc inesse propter sanguinis naturam commemorated by Aristotle though with dissent in the 2 Ch. of his 1. Book de Anima and with the testimony of sundry admirable Experiments both revived and asserted by our perspicacious Contryman Dr. Harvey in his Exercitations concerning the Generation of Animals For since the visible observations of the Manner and process of Nature in the production of the Chicken in and from the Egg doe assure that the Blood is the part of the body which is first generated nourished and moved and that the Soul is Excited and as it were Enkindled first from the blood doubtless the blood is that in which the operations vegetative and sensitive do first manifest themselves that in which the vital Heat the primary and immediate instrument of the Soul especially as to Animation is innate and congenial that which is the Common Vinculum or Caement of the Soul and body and that by the mediation whereof as a vehicle the Soul doth transmit her conserving and invigorating influence into all parts of the body Nay considering that the Blood by perpetual Circulation doth flow like a river of Living water round the body penetrating into and irrigating the substance of all the parts and at the same time communicating to them both Heat and Life and that the Heart is framed for no other end but that by perpetual pulsation together with the concurrence of the veins and arteries it may receive this blood and againe propell it into all the body I say these things duely considered it can be but a Paradox at most to affirme that the Soul having its first and perhaps principal residence in the Blood may very well be conceived to be in respect thereof Tota in toto and tota in qualibet parte And lastly concerning the Manner of this Conjunction of the Soul and body by the Mediation of this vital Nectat the Blood it is not necessary with the Vulgar to imagine that they should mutually touch and by hooks take reciprocall hold each of other in order to Cohaesion and constant Union for that is competent only to Corporeals but that Incorporeals should be conjoyned either one to another or to Corporeals no more is required but an Intimate Praesence which is yet a kind of Contact and so may serve in stead of mutual Apprehension and Continency So that this special Manner of Praesence is that and only that by which an Incorporeal Entity may be united to a Corporeal And now I have explained those difficulties concerning the Conjunction of the Soul and Body the one an Incorporeal and Immortal Being the other Corporeal and Mortal which you seemed to think in-explicable I expect you should be as good as your promise no longer to oppose me but hereafter concurr with me in opinion that The Soul is an Immortal substance and that its Immortality is not only credible by Faith or upon Authority Divine but also Demonstrable by Reason or the Light of Nature Lucretius You may remember Sr I told you in the beginning that though I am an Epicurean in many things concerning Bodies yet as a Christian I detest and utterly renounce the doctrine of that Sect concerning Mens Souls and that I askt your permission to interrupt you sometimes in your discourses by intermixing such Doubts and Objections as seemed to render the Demonstration of the Souls Immortality by meet Reason exceeding difficult if not altogether impossible to this end only that I might the more fully experiment the strength of your Arguments to the Contrary So that notwithstanding all my Contradiction you ought to believe me still as strongly perswaded of the truth of what you have asserted as if I had acted your part and undertaken the assertion of the same myself my diffidence being not of the Souls Incorruptibility but of the possibility of its Demonstration by you or any man else And now though you have brought I confess most excellent Arguments to
cast her slough or a stagg his old horns Athanasius To this I prepared a Solution when I proved the Appetite of Immortality to be Natural to the Soul however this present life cause in us a love of it self above that we ought to have of our future state just as the Appetite or love of Health doth not cease to be Natural however the blandishments of Sense and flattering baits of some present pleasure that impugnes health may create in us a stronger desire for the time and therefore you might have well omitted here to argue the Mortality of the Soul from its reluctancy against death and unwillingnesse to leave its old companion the body However without insisting upon this that many men even in this life long used to a mean and turbulent state or condition become so depraved and abject in their judgement and affection as to refuse to change it for a better if they might To what I have said formerly of the Universal desire of Immortality I shall annex this one both pertinent and memorable consideration out of Cicero in Catone majore Quid quod sapientissimus quisque aequissimo animo moritur stultissimus iniquissimo Nonne nobis videtur Animus is qui plus cernat longiùs videre se ad meliora proficisci ille autem cujus obtusior sit acies non videre Equidem efferor studio patres vestros quos colui dilexi videndi Neque verò eos solùm convenire aveo sed illos etiam de quibus audivi legi ipse conscripsi Quò quidem me proficisceutem haud scio quis facile retraxerit tanquam Peliam recoxerit Quod si quis Deus mihi largiatur ut ex hac aetate repuerascam in cunis vagiam valde recusem nec verò velim quasi decurso spatio à calce ad carceres revocari Doth not every wise man die with extream content and serenity of mind and only Fools with disquiet impatience and reluctancy Is not that mind to be accounted the most clear sighted which seeth things afar off and discerns that it is to be translated into a better state and that dim and weak which doth not look beyond things present and discern nothing of its future condition For my part truly I am even transported with vehement longing to behold again the faces of those brave men your Fathers whom in their lives I so much loved and honored And not only them but some other worthy persons also whose fame I have heard and read of and celebrated in my own writings And if I were so happy once as to be on my journey toward those Heroes I know none that should easily draw me back again or retard my speed by restoring my youth like Pelias If any of the Gods should think to do me a favour in making me young again now after I have attained to this my declining age I profess I would refuse the proffer nor would I having run over the stage of life be brought back again to the post from which I first set forth Hereunto I might add also that patheticall Exclamation of that Emperour of wisedom Marcus Antoninus Ecquando futura es O Anima bona simplex una nuda corpore te ambiente dilucidior Ecquando dispositionem dilectioni et affectui genuino deditam degustabis Ecquando futura es plena rei nullius indiga nihil desiderans ulterius nihil expetens c. As if He were angry and passionately expostulating with his soul that she staid so long in the indigent and vexatious condition of this life and had omitted opportunities of translating herself into a better in which she would be intirely Herself and injoy those pleasures that are more genuine and agreeable to her immortal nature But so clear a truth as this of the Souls desire of an Immortal state after death notwithstanding the unwillingness of some abject minds loaden with earthy and base affections to submit to the stroke of Death which alone can transport them into that state doth need no further testimonies or illustration Lucretius If the Soul survive the body and be Cognoscent or Knowing after death doubtless it must be furnished with senses that so she may see hear c. in order to her knowledge but when once divorced from her Copartner the body she neither hath nor can have Organs for any such uses at all and therefore she can have no knowledge Athanasius Here again you touch upon that so often rejected confusion of Knowledge and Sensation as if they were one and the same thing when from sundry passages in my precedent discourses you might have easily collected that the sense ascribed to the Soul is neither Hearing nor seeing nor c. but the very power of Understanding or Intellection itself which is indeed called many times 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sense in a general acceptation of the word because Cognition is a Perception and because it comprehends in way of Eminency all the subordinate senses or Faculties of sensation i. e. by itself it knowes Colours as the Eye sounds as the Eare and so of the rest And this is the proper prerogative of superior Faculties that besides their owne higher and nobler Functions they comprehend likewise all the Functions of Inferiors and that in a transcendent and more excellent manner as I have already explained But as for the particular manner of the Souls Knowledge after death I remit you to Sr. Kenelme Digbies sublime Speculations concerning the condition of a separate Soul in which though perhaps you may not meet with such satisfaction as you expect yet you will meet with more than I can now give you without repeating his notions Lucretius Well Athanasius you would not have referred me to another but that you are almost exhausted and wearied with speaking thus long yourself and therefore it becomes me in civility to consider the weakness of your lungs and slowness of your tongue of both which I remember you have many years since often complained and to ease you of this penance my curiosity put upon you as soon as I have proposed one Objection more which wiser men than myself have thought not a little difficult to be solved and that in short is this Considering the vast disparity and in truth absolute incompossibility betwixt the affections of a Corporeal and Incorporeal Nature it seems unreasonable to conceive that they can be conjoyned in one Composition such as Man is if as you affirme his soul be an Immortal substance and his Body a Mortal Pray therefore make good the possibility of such a Conjunction and if you can explain what is the common caement or Glew that unites and holds them together and then I have done opposing you Athanasius You very well understand Epicurus doctrine of an Eternal and Incorporeal Inanity or space diffused through the world and commixed with all Bodies or Concretions which are yet dissoluble and doe you pretend after this that you cannot conceive