Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	life_n	live_a	soul_n	6,177	5	5.6721	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34554	A discourse written to a learned frier by M. Des Fourneillis, shewing that this systeme of M. Des Cartes, and particularly his opinion concerning brutes, does contain nothing dangerous, and that all he hath written of both seems to have been taken out of the first chapter of Genesis ; to which is annexed the Systeme general of the same Cartesian philosophy, by Francis Bayle ... ; Englished out of French.; Copie d'une lettre écrite à un sçavant religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus. English	Cordemoy, Géraud de, d. 1684.; Bayle, François, 1622-1709. Systema generale philosophica. English. 1670.; Grangeron, Henri.	1670 (1670)	Wing C6281; ESTC R7465	31,430	139

enough to say that God would have it so to let men know that it was so This Place teaching us that if it may be said that Fish and the other Brute Animals have Souls these Souls are produced by the Waters and the Earth M. Des Cartes had reason to believe that what is here called Soul is nothing else but little Bodies so adjusted to the Organs of Fishes and other Brutes that they make them live move and grow He hath admirably explained upon this Subject the Circulation of the Bloud the manner how it is heated in the Heart how it runs into the Arteries whose different pores let out the particles which their figure maketh fit for the nourishment of the Members and how the finest parts of all extricate themselves from the rest to go to the Brain whence they are distributed into Muscles where they serve for the motion of the whole Body He doth give such an accurate accompt of all these things only by the figure and the motion of the little Bodies and the disposition of the Organs that there can remain no doubt of them And that it may not seem a wonder what he saith of the heat of the Bloud which he maketh the chief Spring of all those Functions commonly called Vital and Animal he proves that they must necessarily be performed by Bodies without the need of any Soul adding to his Reasons the example of certain Liquors which are cold to the touch when they are asunder but grow presently hot even to a degree of ebullition when they are blended together As this effervescence happens to Liquors which are not so much as suspected to have Souls M. Des Cartes hath me thinks advanced nothing but what is rational when he saith That the heat of the Bloud joined to the disposition and the dependance of the Organs is able without a Soul to cause the nutrition and motion of Brutes Me thinks also that he had reason since what the Vulgar Translation calls a Living Soul was produced by the Waters and the Earth to believe that this kind of Souls were only Bodies And indeed there are so many places whereby we may know that this was the meaning of Moses that 't is a wonder to me to find men still doubting thereof I should tire you to recite them all to you let me only desire you to reflect a little on Lev. 17. 11. where you will plainly find what it is that enlivens Flesh and Beasts The Soul of all Flesh is in the Bloud The same saith M. Des Cartes But Deut. 12. 23. Moses expresseth himself yet more clearly to make us understand that Beasts have no other Souls than the Bloud Only be sure that thou eat not the Bloud for the Bloud is the Soul And that it might be yet more understood he adds And therefore thou maist not eat the Soul but shalt pour it upon the Earth as water Is there not then all the reason in the world that those Souls which the earth produceth which may be eaten and poured out upon the earth as water should be counted among Bodies I grant indeed that the bloud when it is heated is exhaled in very subtil parts and that these fine parts are those which do nourish and move But how subtil soever they be they are Bodies and they have nothing more of spiritual in them than flame composed of parts yet more subtil which yet never any man was so unadvised as to call spiritual I wonder for my part that those who have given Souls to all that is nourish'd have given none to a Flame which converts into it all the bodies it lays hold on And what is more I wonder how men could come to attribute to Souls the cause of Nutrition and Motion whereas we see nothing but Body that is capable to be moved and that Nutrition is nothing else but an addition of Bodies to Bodies But without insisting so much upon Ratiocination is it not visible that Moses who certainly ought to be believed acknowledges no other thing for the cause of the motion and nutrition of Beasts but the bloud I think not that any man who considers it will contend about it any longer But that you may the better know the force of all these passages which hitherto I have only taken according to the Vulgar Translation and which according to this version leave no difficulty although the word Soul have been there employed I shall now make use of a means which wil prevail upon your spirit and better perswade you than any other You know more than one Language and among others you know the Hebrew which I understand not I shall tell you then that a while ago reflecting on that place of Scripture where is described the work of the Fifth and that of the Sixth Day there appeared to me so great a difference betwixt the manner in which the formation of Brutes and that of Man was made that I believed what word soever was used in the Vulgar there must be used very differing Expressions in the Hebrew I saw that the Vulgar said that the Beasts have a Living Soul and that the same Translation used the same word to signifie the Life of Man But I found withal that besides that living Soul which the Vulgar gives to Man as it doth to Brutes 't is added that Man was made to the Image of his Maker whom I knew to be a pure Spirit Whence I concluded that since this Resemblance could not be drawn from the Body the Creator having none it must needs be taken from something of a superiour order and in a word from the Spirit To this I added what the Vulgar expresseth speaking of Man in the Second Chap. of Gen. Where I saw that the Lord who had made him a living Creature as the Beasts had breathed into him something which Beasts had not and which me thought should be in him the Principle of a Life altogether different from theirs and the cause of that advantageous resemblance which he was to have with his Maker All these things did already sway much with me for the advantage of Man but believing that I might yet better discover the sense of those places by getting the Interpretation of the Hebrew I consulted Monsieur de Compiegne who is known to be the ablest we have in this Language I prayed him to give me the Version of the first and second Chapter of Genesis and in this Version I found the full proof of what I always thought and of what M. Des Cartes had written on this Subject For I saw that in the place which speaks of the Production of Fishes and other Brutes where the Vulgar saith Let the Waters and the Earth bring forth Living Souls my Interpreter said Let the Earth and the Water produce Living Individuals which carrieth with it a very good sense and expresseth the thing in a far more conceivable manner For it is very intelligible that the Earth and Waters have

produced living Individuals that is that they have been so fitted and disposed by the Almighty hand of the Lord as to form Organical Bodies which being fit for Nutrition and Motion in which consists all the Life of Bodies were to be called Living but forasmuch as they could not be divided without being quite destroyed were to be called Individuals Secondly I see in the place which speaks of the formation of Man that not only he was formed out of the Earth by the hands of the Lord and that thereby he was become a Living Individual as Beasts are but above that I see that besides this Individual or Body Organick which maketh him feed move like Beasts he hath received another thing which my Interpreter calls Mens and which I call Spirit or Thought So that as there is nothing spoken of a Soul for Plants in the Vulgar as I have already observed so there is neither in the Hebrew for Brutes Neither is it said that Brutes have Sense which I also desire you to note but this only is said that they have Life and Motion And because this Life and this Motion do depend upon the disposition and correspondence of many Organs the Division of which would hinder the effect Moses to signifie this Aggregate by one word useth that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth Individual But that which we ought to consider above all is what the same sacred Writer so well declareth That Man hath a Body organized as Brutes have and that this Body liveth by the same Principles which give life to Brutes that having said that the Individuum of every Beast was produced by the Waters and the Earth he saith that that of Man was also produced of the Earth And to make us understand that this dust of the earth which before was divisible without danger was so disposed that it became an Individual as every one of the other living bodies he expresseth himself by the same word he used speaking of Beasts and at the same time adds that the Lord inspired into this living Individual of which he would make a man that which he expresseth by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is a Spirit or Thought This seems to me so strong that I think there can remain no more scruple about this point viz. what we are to believe henceforth of Brutes and of Man Moses hath given us clearly to understand that Brutes live and move because the Bloud and the contrivance of their Organs maketh of each of them an Individual Body which remains fit for those two effects as long as that contrivance lasts And why should we attribute any other thing to them but this individual body by which an accompt can be given of their Life and Motion But then Moses saith not that they have Sense Why should we devise that they have any Or at least what danger is there to assert that they have none Lastly this Man inspired by God teacheth us that the Brutes have nothing but what a Body may have and that we have a body as they But he adds that we have besides a Spirit or if you will a Soul which we know is alone capable of having sense of judging of willing and of all the other wayes of thinking Why then should we not assert that the brute Animals have nothing but Body and that they have no sentiment And why should we not affirm that besides a body like unto that which they have which maketh us not resemble our Maker we have a Soul which giveth us that admirable advantage to resemble him as much as a Creature is capable to do If after all this you shall still tell me that the opinion of M. Des Cartes is dangerous in that it maketh Brutes live and move without a soul I shall answer you that then the History of Moses is dangerous forasmuch as it teacheth us the same thing But if after you have seen how well Moses doth separate that in Man which maketh him live and move from that which maketh him think you shall examine how the Creed of S. Athanasius which we read every day as the Symbol of our Faith defineth Man you 'l see that he saith that the Flesh and the Rational Soul make all what he is To which he adds that as these two substances how different soever they be constitute but one man so God and Man make but one and the same Christ But as in our Lord Jesus Christ it is not allowed whatever the Union of his two Natures be to confound them so as to attribute to the one what comes from the other so there is alwayes great danger to confound in Man the two Substances which do compose him and the Functions which depend from each of them Those that give to the Body sentiment or other perceptions which cannot belong but to the Soul are subject to believe that Man as a Beast hath nothing but Body On the other hand those who think that the Soul is that which causeth Nutrition and Motion in Man are liable to believe that the Beasts which feed and move have a Soul as Man hath and when there is no other difference betwixt Souls than that of more or less there is an Axiom which saying That more or less changeth not the Essence maketh that Men will soon accustom themselves to believe that if all perisheth in Beasts by death there remains also nothing in Man when he hath lost his Life As for me I doubt not at all but what hath been said of Vegetative and Sensitive Souls which are attributed to Plants and to Beasts hath made impious men believe that those which are given to men may be of the same nature If my Discourse were not too prolix already I could explain to you the most wonderful operations of Brutes by the sole Construction of their Organs as all the operations of a Watch are made out to you by the contrivance of its parts and shew you that there is no difference betwixt Artificial and Natural Engines but in this that the Author of Nature is a far more excellent Artist than Men are and that he hath known to apply such parts to one another as are much subtiler and much nimbler than those are of which we commonly compose our Machines I could alse demonstrate to you that there is nothing known to us in Brutes even in the Ape it self which may not be explicated from Bodies and that in Man there are Thoughts which all the diversities imaginable in Figures and Motions cannot give an accompt of But I should exceed the Bounds I have prescribed to my self and it sufficeth me to have shewed you that M. Des Cartes hath alwayes followed Moses to make you aver that his Philosophy contains nothing dangerous Mean time I shall acknowledge that the formation of the World according to M. Des Cartes seems to have something different from that of Moses But when you shall have considered the

our Soul produce reciprocally some Motions in the Body Which convinceth us of the Union there is between the Soul and the Body which consists not only in their mutual presence but in a true mode which in its nature is such that we cannot comprehend it by our Understanding nor by our Imagination but we infer it only by the Experiments of the Senses Our Errors proceed from the ill use of our Freedom in that our Will being in some manner of a vaster extent than our Understanding we do not contain that within the Bounds of this but we either judge of things we do not clearly conceive or we judge of them otherwise than we conceive them For it belongs to the Understanding alone to conceive or to represent Objects simply whereas the Judgment and all other determination is an Act of the Will The chief perfection of Man consists in the good use of his Freedom and in never judging otherwise of things than he conceives them which is so proper to every one that even those who have their Understanding less enlightened may altogether possess this perfection forasmuch as 't is alwayes in their power to suspend their Judgment that is to keep themselves from asserting or from denying a thing of which they have not clear and distinct Idaea's which is to be understood of those only that belong to the Instruction of the Mind for very often we ought not to look for evidence in things which concern the Conduct of our Life and less in those which pertain to Religion because knowing evidently that God cannot deceive us and that there are infinite things in him which are above the reach of our Spirit his Authority ought to produce in us a certainty which surpasseth that of the greatest Evidence We may distinguish three degrees in each sense In the first we are to consider nothing but the Motion which the external Objects do immediately cause in the corporeal Organ and 't is this alone we have common with Brutes The second contains all that results immediately in our Mind because it is united to the Corporeal Organ mov'd and dispos'd by those Objects Such are the Sentiments of Heat of Titillation c. And this is all we ought to refer to Sense if we will exactly distinguish it from the Vnderstanding The third comprehends all the Judgments which we have been accustom'd to make from our Infancy concerning things that are about us upon the occasion of the Impressions that are made in the Organs of our Senses and 't is in these Judgments that our principal Errors do consist so that when we say that the certainty of our Understanding is greater than that of our Senses we mean nothing else than that the judgments we form in a riper age by reason of some new Observations we have made are more certain than those we have formed from our Infancy without having reflected on them Of LOGICK IT cannot be said that the Precepts which are commonly taught in Schools are to be altogether rejected or despised since they are established upon very good Reasons nor that a great number of Questions which are treated therein and which at first sight appear odd enough are of no use For although it be not valuable to know the truths which they explain yet the difficulty there is in examining them exerciseth the Mind and renders it more able to penetrate and to clear up the Difficulties which are met with in weighty matters provided Men use this Caution that by too much applying the Mind to those things which subsist no otherwise than in an Idaea they be not taken for real Beings and such as do exist without the Understanding Thus Geometricians make themselves capable promptly to explicate the most difficult Problemes in those matters which are of use in the life of Man by exercising themselves in the most knotty and the most abstract Questions of Algebra and by making Magical Squares and other things which are of no use in themselves But to speak precisely no man of good sense that acts candidly and labours only to find out Truth either alone or jointly with others without any design of deceiving them and without any ground of fearing to be deceived himself by any Sophism needs any other Precepts of Logick but these four ensuing The first is never to receive any thing for true which is not evidently known to be such that is never to take in more into our Judgments than what presents it self so clearly and so distinctly that we cannot at all doubt thereof The second to divide each of the difficulties which we discuss into as many small parts as is possible and necessary for examining them the better The third orderly to conduct our Thoughts by beginning with the most simple and the most easily knowable Objects and so by degrees to ascend to the knowledge of the more compounded The fourth to make throughout such complete Enumerations and such universal Reviews that we be assured we omit nothing Of NATURAL PHILOSOPHY Of the Systeme of the World and the Causes of the Disposition and Order of the most considerable parts thereof THE extension into length breadth and thickness is that we call Body or First Matter and whosoever shall attentively consider the Idaea he hath of this Matter will be convinced that a Vacuum is impossible that Rarefaction is made only by the acquisition of some new Matter and Condensation by the loss of some other that the interior place of a Body is not different from that Body that the World is indefinite that 't is repugnant there be more Worlds than one although there may be many Bodies that may be inhabited as our Earth is that the Matter of the Heavens and that of things Sublunary are of the same kind Lastly that a Cubique Foot of Lead holds not more Matter than a Cubique Foot of Cork Divisibility Figure and Impenetrability are the Essential Proprieties of Matter Motion Light Colours c. are its common Accidents That which Philophers call the Quantity of a Body is not the extension of that Body precisely but its Extension as such that is forasmuch as it may be measur'd by such and such a number of Feet Fathoms or the like measure Divisibility is the most fertil of all the proprieties of Matter 't is from thence that the several Magnitudes and Figures of her parts are derived and from the different disposition of these do proceed all the different Beings which make up the World The Matter cannot be actually divided but by Local Motion and this being taken formally is nothing else but the successive application of a Body in all it hath outwardly to the several parts of the Bodies which touch it immediately Motion which is called Efficient consists in the force or power of moving which God from the beginning hath put into the parts of the Matter and which he still conserveth therein in the same quantity for which cause he is called the

Tympanum or Drum The Sight hath for its Organ the Retina more particularly the other parts of the Eye making the Rayes of Light or Colours which come from divers points of the Objects to affect divers points of the Retina There are three inward particular Senses that of Thirst which hath its Seat in the Throat that of Hunger in the Stomach that of the Passions in the Heart The Sense called the Common Sense hath its Seat in the Brain and because the Animal Motion and the Functions of all the Senses depend upon the Spirits that come from the Bloud 't is therefore that the Scripture saith that the Soul of the Beasts is in the Bloud Of MAN MAn is made up not only of a Body which as that of Animals hath a peculiar structure of Organs wherein consists in some sense the Form of this Body but also of a Soul which is the true and essential Form of Man or of the Humane Body as such after the manner that Aristotle taketh this Word Form in his First Book of Generation Chap. 10. By reason of the Union which is between the Soul and the Body the Impressions which the Objects make upon the Senses are cause that there do result in the Soul certain Sensations And not only the Soul perceiveth many Motions that are made in the Body but she also is able to produce or to hinder them 'T is true that this is only done by variously determining the Motion of the Animal Spirits by her Thoughts Man hath as many Exteriour and Interiour Senses as Animals but with this difference that in these all the Action of the Senses consists in the Motion of the Corporeal Organ whereas in Man the motion of the Organ is accompanied with a Thought or Perception of the Soul which is called the Sentiment of Sound of Light of Colour c. Of the PASSIONS MAn hath also his Passions which are perceptions of the Sentiments or Commotions of the Soul which are referred particularly to her and which are caused entertained and fortified by some Motion of the Spirits Admiration is a sudden surprisal of the Soul which maketh that she is carried with attention to consider the Objects that seem rare and extraordinary to her Love is a perception or motion of the Soul caused by the motion of the Spirits inciting her to join her self by the Will to the Objects which appear agreeable to her Hatred is a motion caused by the Spirits which inciteth the Soul to a separation from the Objects which present themselves as disagreeable or hurtful to her Desire is an agitation of the Soul caused by the Spirits which disposeth her to will future things which she represents to her self as sutable and beneficial Joy is an agreeable commotion of the Soul caused by the enjoyment she finds in a good which the Impressions of the Brain represent to her as hers Sadness is an unpleasing Languor caused by the Incommodities which the Soul receiveth of the Evil of Defect which the Impressions of the Brain represent to her as concerning her self These six Passions are primitive and all the Genus's whose Species all the others are According to the Institution of Nature all the Passions refer to the Body and are not given to the Soul but forasmuch as she is joined to 〈◊〉 So that their natural use consists only in this that they fortisie and make lasting in the Soul those Thoughts which 't is good she should conserve and by which she is incited to consent and to contribute to the Actions that may serve to keep the Body or to render it in some manner more perfect As also all the Evil which they can occasion consists in that they strengthen and entertain thoughts more than needs or else that they keep others which it is not good to indulge to Of MORALITY Of the Soveraign Natural Good IF we consider Goodness with relation to our selves the Soveraign Good of the Soul of every one in particular consists in a firm and constant will to do well and in the contentment produced thereby And 't is herein that all Virtues do consist Justice for example is nothing but a constant Will to give to every one what we judge to belong to him Boldness nothing but a constant Will to execute things dangerous when we believe them to be the best Humility nothing but a constant Will never to prefer ourselves before others and to think that others have their Free Will as well as we can use it as well as we c. Now 't is this alone which deserveth Praise and Honour 't is from hence alone that the greatest and most solid Contentment of Life results and consequently wherein the Soveraign Good consists There are two sorts of Indifference which appertain to humane Liberty One is from the Object 's part and this is not Essential on the contrary we are never more free than when we are less indifferent The other consists in the real and positive faculty we have to determin our selves to the one or the other of two Contraries and this is always found in the Will and agreeth perfectly well with all the impressions that are caused in her from God's part although we do not conceive how this agreement is made The Angels and the Saints in Heaven do love God freely but their Liberty consists not as Ours doth in a positive faculty to determin themselves to the one or the other of two Contraries but only in this that seeing God Soveraignly Good they love him in such a manner that they feel not any exteriour force constraining them thereto FINIS