this I will give you for it his own confession as he freely writ it in a private Letter to that Admirable Lady the Princess Elizabeth first Daughter to Frederick King of Bohemia who seems to have desir'd his Opinion on that important Question about which he sends her this Answer Pour ce qui c. i. e. As to the State of the Soul after this Life my knowledge of it is far inferiour to that of Monsieur he means Sir Kenelm Digby For setting aside that which Religion teaches us of it I confess that by meeâ— Natural Reason we may indeed make many conjectures to our own advantage and have fair Hopes but not any Assurance And accordingly in the next clause he gives the imprudence of quitting what is certain for an uncertainty as the cause why according to Natural Reason we are never to seek Death Nor do I wonder he should be of that mind For all that meer Reason can demonstrate may be reduced to these two things One that the Rational Soul being an Incorporeal Substance there is no necessity that it should perish with the Body so that if God have not otherwise appointed the Soul may survive the Body and last for ever The other that the Nature of the Soul according to Des Cartes consisting in its being a Substance that thinks we may conclude that though it be by death separate from the Body it will nevertheless retain the power of thinking But now whether either of these two things or both be sufficient to endear the state of separation after death to a considering man I think may be justly question'd For Immortality or Perseverance in Duration simply consider'd is rather a thing presuppos'd to or a requisite of Felicity than a part of it and being in it self an adiaphorous thing assumes the nature of the state or condition to which 't is joyn'd and does not make that state happy or miserable but makes the possessors of it more happy or more miserable than otherwise they would be And though some School-men upon Aery Metaphysical Notions would have men think it is more eligible to be wretched than not to be at all yet we may oppose to their speculative subtilties the sentiments of Mankind and the far more considerable Testimony of the Saviour of Mankind who speaking of the Disciple that betray'd him says That it had been good for that man if he had never been born And Eternity is generally conceived to aggravate no less the miseries of Hell than it heightens the joys of Heaven And here we may consider first That meer Reason cannot so much as assure us absolutely that the Soul shall survive the Body For the Truth of which we have not onely Cartesius's Confession lately recited but a probable Argument drawn from the nature of the thing since as the Body and Soul were brought together not by any meer Physical Agents and since their Association and Union whilst they continued together was made upon Conditions that depended solely upon Gods free and arbitrary Institution so for ought Reason can secure us of one of the Conditions of that Association may be That the Body and Soul should not survive each other Secondly supposing that the Soul be permitted to outlive the Body meer Reason cannot inform us what will become of her in her separate state whether she will be vitally united to any other kind of Body or Vehicle and if to some of what kind that will be and upon what terms the Union will be made For possibly she may be united to an unorganiz'd or very imperfectly organiz'd Body wherein she cannot exercise the same Functions she did in her Humane Body As we see that even in this Life the Souls of Natural Fools are united to Bodies wherein they cannot discourse or at least cannot Philosophize And 't is plain that some Souls are introduc'd into Bodies which by reason of Paralytical and other Diseases they are unable to move though that does not always hinder them from being obnoxious to feel pain So that for ought we naturally know a Humane Soul separated from the Body may be united to such a portion of Matter that she may neither have the power to move it nor the advantage of receiving any agreeable Informations by its interventions having upon the account of that Union no other sense than that of pain But let us now consider what will follow if I should grant that the Soul will not be made miserable by being thus wretchedly matched Suppose we then that she be left free to enjoy what belongs to her own nature That being onely the Power of always thinking it may well be doubted whether th'exercise of that Power wil suffice to make her happy You will perchance easily believe that I love as well as another to entertain my self with my own thoughts and to enjoy them undisturbed by visits and other avocations I would onely accompanied by a Servant and a Book go to dine at an Inn upon a Road to enjoy my thoughts the more freely for that day But yet I think the most contemplative men would at least in time grow weary of thinking if they received no supply of Objects from without by Reading Seeing or Conversing and if they also wanted the opportunity of executing their thoughts by moving the Members of their Bodies or of imparting them either by Discoursing or Writing of Books or by making of Experiments On this occasion I remember that I knew a Gentleman who was in Spain for a State-crime which yet he thought an Heroick action kept close prisoner for a year in a place where though he had allowed him a Diet not unfit for a Person of Note as he was yet he was not permitted the benefit of any Light either of the Day or Candles and was not accosted by any humane creature save at certain times by the Jaylor that brought him meat and drink but was strictly forbidden to converse with him Now though this Gentleman by his discourse appear'd to be a man of a lively humour yet being ask'd by me how he could do to pass the time in that sad solitude he confessed to me that though he had the liberty of walking too and fro in his Prison and though by often recalling into his mind all the adventures and other passages of his former life and by several ways combining and diversifying his Thoughts he endeavoured to give his mind as much variety of employment as he was able yet that would not serve his turn but he was often reduc'd by drinking large draughts of Wine and then casting himself upon his bed to endeavour to drown that Melancholly which the want of new objects cast him into And I can easily admit he found a great deal of difference between the sense he had of thinking when he was at liberty and that which he had when he was confin'd to that employment whose delightfulness like fire cannot last long when it is as his was denied
dark And first touching the Body of Man The Epicureans attributed its Original as that of all things else to the Casual Concourse of Atoms and the Stoicks absurdly and injuriously enough but much more pardonably than their follower herein Mr. Hobbs would have Men to spring up like Mushrooms out of the ground and whereas other Philosophers maintain conceits about it too wild to be here recited the Book of Genesis assures us that the Body of Man was first form'd by God in a peculiar manner of a Terrestrial Matter and 't is there described as having been perfected before the Soul was united to it And as Theology thus teaches us how the Body of Man had its first beginning so it likewise assures us what shall become of the Body after death though bare Natural Reason will scarce be pretended to reach to so abstruse and difficult an Article as that of a Resurrection which when propos'd by St. Paul produc'd among the Athenian Philosophers nothing else but wonder or laughter Not to mention that Theology teaches us divers other things about the Origine and Condition of Mens Bodies as That all Mankind is the Off-spring of One Man and one Woman That the first Woman was not made of the same Matter nor after the same Manner as the first Man but was afterwards taken from his side That both Adam and Eve were not as many Epicureans and other Philosophers fanci'd that the first men were first Infants whence they did as we do grow by degrees to be mature and compleat Humane Persons but were made so all at once and That hereafter as all mens Bodies shall rise again so they shall all or at least all those of the just be kept from ever dying a second time And as for the Humane Soul though I willingly grant that much may be deduc'd from the Light of Reason onely touching its Existence Properties and Duration yet Divine Revelation teaches it us with more clearness and with greater Authority as sure he that made our Souls and upholds them can best know what they are and how long he will have them last And as the Scripture expresly teaches us that the Rational Soul is distinct from the Body as not being to be destroy'd by those very Enemies that kill the Body so about the Origine of this Immortal Soul about which Philosophers can give us but wide and precarious conjectures Theology assures us that the Soul of man had not such an Origination as those of other Animals but was Gods own immediate Workmanship and was united to the Body already form'd And yet not so united but that upon their Divorce she will survive and pass into a state in which Death shall have no power over her I expect you will here object that for the knowledge of the Perpetual Duration of separate Souls we need not be beholding to the Scripture since the Immortality of the Soul may be sufficiently prov'd by the sole Light of Nature and particularly has been demonstrated by your great Des Cartes But you must give me leave to tell you that besides that a matter of that weight and concernment cannot be too well prov'd and consequently ought to procure a welcome for all good Mediums of Probation besides this I say I doubt many Cartesians do as well as others mistake both the difficulty under consideration and the scope of Des Cartes's Discourse For I grant that by Natural Philosophy alone the Immortality of the Soul may be prov'd against its usual Enemies Atheists and Epicureans For the ground upon which these men think it mortal being That 't is not a true substance but onely a modification of Body which consequently must perish when the frame or structure of the Body whereto it belongs is dissolv'd Their ground being this I say if we can prove by some Intellectual Operations of the Rational Soul which Matter however modifi'd cannot reach That it is a Substance distinct from the Humane Body there is no reason why the Dissolution of the Latter should infer the Destruction of the Former which is a simple Substance and as real a Substance as Matter it self which yet the Adversaries affirm to be Indestructible But though by the Mental Operations of the Rational Soul and perhaps by other Mediums it may against the Epicureans and other meer Naturalists who will not allow God to have any thing to do in the case be prov'd to be Immortal in the sense newly propos'd yet the same Proofs will not evince that absolutely it shall never cease to be if we dispute with Philosophers who admit as the Cartesians and many others do that God is the sole Creator and Preserver of all things For how are we sure but that God may have so ordain'd That though the Soul of Man by the continuance of his ordinary and upholding Concourse may survive the Body yet as 't is generally believ'd not to be created till it be just to be infus'd into the Body so it shall be annihilated when it parts with the Body God withdrawing at death that supporting influence which alone kept it from relapsing to its first Nothing Whence it may appear that notwithstanding the Physical proofs of the Spirituality and separableness of the Humane Soul we are yet much beholding to Divine Revelation for assuring us that its Duration shall be endless And now to make good what I was intimating above concerning the Cartesians and the scope of Des Cartes's Demonstration I shall appeal to no other than his own Expressions to evince that he consider'd this matter for the main as we have done and pretended to demonstrate that the Soul is a Distinct Substance from the Body but not that absolutely speaking it is Immortal Cur answers that excellent Author de immortalitate Animae nihil scripserim jam dixi in Synopsi mearum Meditationum Quod ejus ab omni corpore distinctionem satis probaverim supra ostendi Quod vero additis Ex distinctione Animae á corpore non sequi ejus Immortalitatem quia nihilominus dici potest illam à Deo talis naturae factam esse ut ejus Duratio simul cum Duratione vitae corporeae finiatur fateor á me refelli non posse Neque enim tantum mihi assumo ut quicquam de iis quae à libera Dei voluntate dependent humanae rationis vi determinare aggrediar Docet Naturalis cognitio c. Sed si de absoluta Dei potestate quaeratur an forte decreverit ut humanae animae iisdem Temporibus esse desinant quibus Corpora quae illis adjunxit solius Dei est respondere And if he would not assume to demonstrate by Natural Reason so much as the Existence of the Soul after death unless upon a supposition we may well presume that he would less take upon him to determine what shall be the condition of that Soul after it leaves the Body And that you may not doubt of
both fuel and vent And in a word though I most readily grant that Thinking interwoven with Conversation and Action may be a very pleasant way of passing ones Time yet Man being by nature a sociable creature I fear that alone would be a dry and wearisome Imployment to spend Eternity in Before I proceed to the next Section I must not omit to take notice That though the brevity I propos'd to my self keeps me from discoursing of any Theological Subjects save what I have touch'd upon about the Divine Attributes and the things I have mention'd about the Universe in general and the Humane Soul yet there are divers other things knowable by the help of Revelation and not without it that are of so noble and sublime a Nature that the greatest Wits may find their best Abilities both fully exercis'd and highly gratifi'd by making Enquiries into them I shall not name for proof of this the Adorable Mystery of the Trinity wherein 't is acknowledg'd that the most soaring Speculators are wont to be pos'd or to loose themselves But I shall rather mention the Redemption of Mankind and the Decrees of God concerning Men. For though these seem to be less out of the Ken of our Natural Faculties yet 't is into some things that belong to the former of them that the Scripture tells us The Angels desire to pry and 't was the consideration of the latter of them that made one that had been caught up into the Mansion of the Angels amazedly cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Not are these the onely things that the Scripture it self terms Mysteries though for brevities sake instead of specifying any of them I shall content my self to represent to you in general that since Gods wisdom is boundless it may sure have more ways than one to display it self And though the material World be full of the Productions of his Wisdom yet that hinders not but that the Scripture may be enobled with many excellent Impresses and as it were Signatures of the same Attribute For as I was beginning to say it cannot but be highly injurious to the Deity in whom all other True Perfections as well as Omniscience are both united and transcendent to think that he can contrive no ways to disclose his Perfections besides the ordering of Matter and Motion and cannot otherwise deserve to be the Object of Mens studies and their Admiration than in the capacity of a Creator And I think I might safely add that besides these Grand and Mysterious Points I came from mentioning there are many other noble and important things wherein unassisted Reason leaves us in the dark which though not so clearly reveal'd in the Scripture are yet in an inviting measure discover'd there and consequently deserve the indagation of a Curious and Philosophical Soul Shall we not think it worth enquiring whether the Satisfaction of Christ was necessary to appease the Justice of God and purchase Redemption for Mankind Or whether God as Absolute and Supreme Governour of the World might have freely remitted the Penalties of sin Shall we not think it worth the inquiring upon what Account and upon what Terms the Justification of Men â—â—wards God is transacted especially considering how much it imports us to know and how perplexedly a Doctrine not in it self abstruse is wont to be delivered Shall not we inquire whether or no the Souls of Men before they were united to their Bodies pre-existed in a happier state as many of the Ancient and Modern Jews and Platonists and besides Origen some Learned Men of our times do believe And shall not we be curious to know whether when the Soul leaves the Body it do immediately pass to Heaven or Hell as 't is commonly believed or for want of Organs be laid as it were asleep in an insensible and unactive state till it recover the Body at the Resurrection as many Socinians and others maintain Or whether it be conveyed into secret Recesses where though it be in a good or bad condition according to what it did in the Body 't is yet repriev'd from the flames of Hell and restrain'd from the Beatifick Vision till the Day of Judgment which seems to have been the opinion of many if not most of the Primitive Fathers and Christians Shall not we be curious to know whether at that great Decretory Day this vast Fabrick of the World which all confess must have its frame quite shatter'd shall be suffer'd to relapse into its first Nothing as several Divines assert or shall be after its Dissolution renew'd to a better state and as it were Transfigur'd And shall not we inquire whether or no in that future state of things which shall never have an end we shall know one another as Adam when he awak'd out of his profound sleep knew Eve whom he never saw before and whether those Personal Friendships and Affections we had for one another here and the pathetick Consideration of the Relations as of Father and Son Husband and Wife Chaste Mistris and Virtuous Lover Prince and Subject on which many of them were grounded shall continue Or whether all those things as antiquated and slight shall be obliterated and as it were swallowed up as the former Relation of a Cousin a great way off is scarce at all consider'd when the Persons come so to change their state as to be united by the strict Bonds of Marriage But 't were tedious to propose all the other Points whereof the Divine takes cognizance that highly merit an inquisitive mans curiosity and about which all the Writings of the old Greek and other Heathen Philosophers put together will give us far less information than the single Volume of Canonical Scripture I foresee indeed that it may nevertheless be objected that in some of these Inquiries Revelation incumbers Reason by delivering things which Reason is obliged to make its Hypothesis consistent with But besides that this cannot be so much as pretended of all if you consider how much unassisted Reason leaves us in the dark about these matters wherein she has not been able to frame so much as probable determinations especially in comparison of those probabilities that Reason can deduce from what it finds one way or other delivered in the Scripture If you consider this I say you will I presume allow me to say That the revealed Truths which Reason is obliged to comply with if they be burdens to it are but such Burdens as Feathers are to a Hawk which instead of hindring his flight by their weight enable him to soar toward Heaven and take a larger prospect of things than if he had not feathers he could possibly do And on this occasion Sir the greater Reverence I owe to the Scripture it self than to its Expositors prevails upon me to tell you freely that you will not do right either to Theology or the greatest Repository of its Truths the Bible if you imagine that there are no
Form or Occult Quality Those very Aristotelians that believe the Celestial Bodies to be mov'd by Intelligences have no recourse to any peculiar agency of theirs to account for Eclipses And we laugh at those East-Indians that to this day go out in multitudes with some Instruments that may relieve the distressed Luminary whose loss of Light they fancy to proceed from some fainting fit out of which it must be rouz'd For no Intelligent man whether Chymist or Peripatetic flies to his peculiar Principles after he is informed that the Moon is Eclipsed by the interposition of the Earth betwixt her and it and the Sun by that of the Moon betwixt him and the Earth And when we see the Image of a Man cast into the Air by a Concave Spherical Looking-glass though most men are amaz'd at it and some suspect it to be no less than an effect of Witchcraft yet he that is skill'd enough in Catoptricks will without consulting Aristotle or Paracelsus or flying to Hypostatical Principles and Substantial Forms be satisfied that the Phaenomenon is produc'd by the beams of Light reflected and thereby made convergent according to Optical and consequently Mathematical Laws But I must not now repeat what I elsewhere say to shew that the Corpuscular Principles have been declin'd by Philosophers of different Sects not because they think not our Explications clear if not much more so than their own but because they imagine that the applications of them can be made but to few things and consequently are insufficient II. In the next place I observe that there cannot be fewer Principles than the two grand ones of Mechanical Philosophy Matter and Motion For Matter alone unless it be moved is altogether unactive and whilst all the parts of a Body continue in one state without any Motion at all that Body will not exercise any action nor suffer any alteration it self though it may perhaps modifie the action of other Bodies that move against it III. Nor can we conceive any Principles more primary than Matter and Motion For either both of them were immediately created by God or to add that for their sakes that would have Matter to be unproduc'd if Matter be eternal Motion must either be produc'd by some Immaterial Supernatural Agent or it must immediately flow by way of Emanation from the nature of the matter it appertains to IV. Neither can there be any Physical Principles more simple than Matter and Motion neither of them being resoluble into any things whereof it may be truly or so much as tolerably said to be compounded V. The next thing I shall name to recommend the Corpuscular Principle is their great Comprehensiveness I consider then that the genuine and necessary effect of the sufficiently strong Motion of one part of Matter against another is either to drive it on in its intire bulk or else to break or divide it into particles of determinate Motion Figure Size Posture Rest Order or Texture The two first of these for instance are each of them capable of numerous varieties For the Figure of a portion of Matter may either be one of the five Regular Figures treated of by Geometricians or some determinate Species of solid Figures as that of a Cone Cylinder c. or Irregular though not perhaps Anonymous as the Grains of Sand Hoops Feathers Branches Forks Files c. And as the Figure so the Motion of one of these particles may be exceedingly diversified not onely by the determination to this or that part of the world but by several other things as particularly by the almost infinitely varying degrees of Celerity by the manner of its progression with or without Rotation and other modifying Circumstances and more yet by the Line wherein it moves as besides Streight Circular Elliptical Parabolical Hyperbolical Spiral and I know not how many others For as later Geometricians have shewn that those crooked Lines may be compounded of several Motions that is trac'd by a Body whose motion is mixt of and results from two or more simpler Motions so how many more curves may or rather may not be made by new Compositions and Decompositions of Motion is no easie task to determine Now since a single particle of Matter by vertue of two onely of the Mechanical affections that belong to it be diversifiable so many ways how vast a number of variations may we suppose capable of being produc'd by the Compositions and Decompositions of Myriads of single invisible Corpuscles that may be contained and contex'd in one small Body and each of them be imbued with more than two or three of the fertile Catholick Principles above mention'd Especially since the aggregate of those Corpuscles may be farther diversifi'd by the Texture resulting from their Convention into a Body which as so made up has its own Bigness and Shape and Pores perhaps very many and various and has also many capacities of acting and suffering upon the score of the place it holds among other Bodies in a World constituted as ours is So that when I consider the almost innumerable diversifications that Compositions and Decompositions may make of a small number not perhaps exceeding twenty of distinct things I am apt to look upon those who think the Mechanical Principles may serve indeed to give an account of the Phaenomena of this or that particular part of Natural Philosophy as Staticks Hydrostaticks the Theory of the Planetary Motions c. but can never be applied to all the Phaenomena of things Corporeal I am apt I say to look upon those otherwise Learned men as I would do upon him that should affirm that by putting together the Letters of the Alphabet one may indeed make up all the words to be found in one Book as in Euclid or Virgil or in one Language as Latine or English but that they can by no means suffice to supply words to all the Books of a great Library much less to all the Languages in the world And whereas there is another sort of Philosophers that observing the great efficacy of the bigness and shape and situation and motion and connexion in Engines are willing to allow that those Mechanical Principles may have a great stroke in the Operations of Bodies of a sensible bulk and manifest Mechanism and therefore may be usefully imploy'd in accounting for the effects and Phaenomena of such Bodies who yet will not admit that these Principles can be apply'd to the hidden Transactions that pass among the minute Particles of Bodies and therefore think it necessary to refer these to what they call Nature Substantial Forms Real Qualities and the like Un-mechanical Principles and Agents But this is not necessary for both the Mechanical affections of Matter are to be found and the Laws of Motion take place not onely in the great Masses and the middle-siz'd Lumps but in the smallest Fragments of Matter and a lesser portion of it being as well a Body as a greater must as necessarily as it have