could strike it But it is evident say you out of these pretended causes of this motion that such atomes cannot move so swiftly downwards as a great dense body since their littleness and their rarity are both of them hindering to their motion Therefore this cannot be cause of that effect which we call gravity To this I reply That to have the atoms give these blows to a descending dense body 't is not requir'd that their natural and ordinary motion should be swifter then the descent of such a dense body but the very descent of it occasions their striking it for as it falls and makes it self a way through them they divide themselves before it and swell on the sides and a little above it and presently close again behind it and over it assoon as it is past Now that closing to hinder vacuity of space is a sudden one and thereby attains great velocity which would carry the atoms in that degree of velocity further than the descending body if they did not encounter with it in their way to retard them which encounter and tarding implyes such strokes upon the dense body as we suppose to cause this motion And the like we see in water into which letting a stone fall presently the water that was divided by the stone and swells on the sides higher then it was before closes upon the back of the descending stone and follows it so violently that for a while after it leaves a purling hole in the place where the stone went down till by the repose of the stone the water returns likewise to its quiet and so its superficies becomes even In the third place an enquiry occurs emergent out of this doctrine of the cause of bodies moving upwards and downwards Which is Whether there would be any natural motion deep in the earth beyond the activity of the Sun beams for out of these principles it follows that there would not and consequently there must be a vast Orb in which there would be no motion of gravity or levity For suppose the Sun beams might pierce a thousand miles deep into the body of the earth yet there would still remain a mass whose Diameter would be near 5000 miles in which there would be no gravitation nor the contrary motion For my part I shall make no difficulty to grant the inference as far as concerns motion caused by our Sun for what inconvenience would follow out of it But I will not offer at determining whether there may not be enclosed within that great sphere of earth some other fire such as the Chymists talk of an Archeus a Demogorgon seated in the centre like the heart in animals which may raise up vapours and boyl an air out of them and divide gross bodies into atoms and accordingly give them motions answerable to ours but in different lines from ours according as that fire or Sun is situated Since the far-searching Authour of the Dialogues de Mundo hath left that speculation undecided after he had touched upon it in the Twelfth knot of his first Dialogue Fourthly it may be objected that if such descending atoms as we have described were the cause of a bodies gravity and descending towards the center the same body would at divers times descend more and less swiftly for example after midnight when the atoms begin to descend more slowly the same body would descend more slowly in a like proportion and not weigh so much as it did in the heat of the day The same may be said of Summer and Winter for in Winter time the atoms seem to be more gross and consequently to strike more strongly upon the bodies they meet with in their way as they descend yet on the other side they seem in the Summer to be more numerous as also to descend from a greater height both which circumstances will be cause of a stronger stroke and more vigorous impulse on the body they hit And the like may be objected of divers parts of the World for in the Torrid Zone it will always happen as in Summer in places of the Temperate Zone and in the Polar times as in deepest winter so that no where there should be any standard or certainty in the weight of bodies if it depended upon so mutable a cause And it makes to the same effect that a body which lies under a thick rock or any other very dense body that cannot be penetrated by any great store of atoms should not be so heavy as it would be in the open and free air where the atoms in their compleat numbers have their full strokes For answer to these and such like instances we are to note first that 't is not so much the number or violence of the percussion of the striking atoms as the density of the thing strucken which gives the measure to the descending of a weighty body and the chief thing which the stroak of the atoms gives to a dense body is a determination of the way which a dense body is to cut to it self therfore multiplication or lessening of the atoms will not make any sensible difference betwixt the weight of one dense body where manya toms strike and an other body of the same density where but a few strike so that the stroak downwards of the descending atoms be greater then the stroke upwards of the ascending atoms and therby determines it to weigh to the Centrewards and not rise floating upwards which is all the sensible effect we can perceive Next we may observe that the first particulars of the objection do not reach home to enfeeble our doctrine in this particular although we admit them to be in such sort as they are proposed for they withal imply such a perpetual variation of causes ever favourable to our position that nothing can be infer'd out of them to repugne against it As thus When there are many atoms descending in the air the same general cause which makes them be many makes them also be light in proportion to their multitude And so when they are few they are heavy likewise when the atoms are light the air is rarified and thin and when they are heavy the air is thick And so upon the whole matter 't is evident that we cannot make such a precise and exact judgement of the variety of circumstances as to be able to determine when there is absolutely more cause of weight and when less And as we find not weight enough in either side of these opposite circumstances to turn the scales in our discourse so likewise we find the same indifference in experience it self for the weights we use do weigh equally in mysty weather and in clear and yet in rigor of discourse we cannot doubt but that in truth they do not gravitate or weigh so much though the difference be imperceptible to sense when the air is thick and foggy as when its pure and rarified Which thickness of the Medium when it arrives to a very
to be partaker of a happy Eternity And consequently if a Statesman has not this Science he must be subject to a braver man than himself whose province is to direct all his actions to This end We are told how reverently great Caesar listned to the discourses of learned Achoreus how observant Alexander was of his Master Aristotle how secure Nero trode whiles Seneca guided his steps how humble Constantine was to St. Sylvester's precepts how Charlemain govern'd himself in his most important actions by Alcuine's advice In a word all the Great-men of Antiquity as well among the Romans as among the Grecians had their Philosophers and Divines in their kind belonging to them from whom they might derive rules of living and doing as they ought upon all occasions if themselvs were not Masters in that superiour and all-directing Science He that sees not by his own light must in this dangerous Ocean steer by the Lantern which another hangs out to him If the person he relies on either withholds the light from him or shews him a false one he is presently in the dark and cannot fail of losing his way How great an authority had the Augurs and Priests among the rude Romans to forbid any Publick act or break any Assembly upon pretence of Religious duties when they liked not the business in agitation The like may interessed Divines among Christians do if the Ministers of State have not some insight into Divinity He leads a vexatious life who in his noblest actions is so gored with scruples that he dares not make a step without the authority of another to warrant him Yet I do not conclude that he whom I design by the character of a Brave Man should be a professed or complete Metaphysician or Divine and consummate in every curious circumstance that belongs to this Science it suffices him to know it in bulk and have so much Divinity as in common occurrents to be able to govern himself and in special ones to understand what and why his Divine perswades him to any thing so that even then though not without help yet he governs himself and is not blindly govern'd by another He that aims at being a perfect Hors-man is bound to know in general besides the art of Riding the nature and temper of Horses and to understand the different qualities of Bits Saddles and other utensils of a Hors-man But the utmost exactness in these particulars belongs to Farriers Sadlers Smiths and other Tradesmen of all which the judicious Rider knows how to make due use when he has occasion for his principal end which is orderly governing his Horse In like manner he whom we design by a complete Brave Man must know solidity the main End he is in the World for and withall how to serve himself when he pleases and needs of the Divine's high Contemplations of the Metaphysician's subtile Speculations of the Natural-Philosopher's minute Observations of the Mathematician's nice Demonstrations and whatever else of particular Professions may conduce to his End though without making any of them his profess'd business To lay grounds for such knowledg as this is the scope of my ensuing Discourse My first aim was to beget it in my self to which end the digesting my thoughts into Order and the setting them down in Writing was necessary for without such strict examination as the pening them affords one means to make they would hardly have avoided being disjointed and roving ones Now that I have done that my next aim is that You to whom I wish as much good as to my self may reap as much benefit by the Studying it as I have done by the Composing it My end then being a private one as looking no further than You my Son and my Self I have not endeavour'd to express my Conceptions either in the Phrase or Language of the Schools It will serve our turn to comprehend the Substance without confining our selvs to any scrupulous exactness in what concerns only form And the same consideration has made me pass slightly over many particulars in my First Treatise of the Nature of Bodies on which learned and witty men might spin out large Volumns For in that part I aim no further than to shew what may be effected by Corporeal Agents There Possibility servs my turn as well as the determinate indivisible point of Truth I am obliged to that only in my main great Theme the Soul in regard of which the numerous crooked narrow cranies and the restrained flexuous rivolets of Corporeal things are all contemptible further than the knowledge of them serves to the knowledge of the Soul And a Gallant man whose thoughts flie at the highest Game requires no further insight into them than to satisfie himself by whatway they may be performed deeming it far too mean for him to dwell upon the subtilest of their mysteries for Science sake Besides this libertie that the scope I aim at allows me of passing very cursorily over sundry particulars I find now at my reading all over together what I have written to deliver it to the Printer that even in that which I ought to have done to comply with my own design and expectation I am fallen very short so that if I had not unwarily too far engaged my self for the present publishing it truly I should have kept it by me till I had once again gone over it I find the whole piece very confusedly done the stile unequal and unpolished many particulars when they are not absolutely necessary to my main drift too slightly touch'd and far from being driven home and in a word all of it seems to be rather but a loose model and roughcast of what I design to do than a complete Work throughly finished But since by my overforward promising of this piece to several Friends that have been very earnest for it I have now brought my self to that pass that it would ill become me to delay any longer the publishing of somthing on this Subject and that obligations of another nature permit me not at present to dwell any longer upon This besides that so lazy a brain as mine is grows soon weary when it has so intangled a skean as this to unwind I now send it you as it is but with a promise that at my first leisure I will take a strict survey of it and then in another Edition will polish correct and add what shall appear needful to me If any man shall take the Book out of my hand invited by the Title and Subject to look into it I pray you in my behalf represent to him how distant my profession is and how contrary my Education has been to writing of Books In every Art the plainest that is there is an Apprentiship necessary before it can be expected one should work it in a fashionable piece The first attempts are always very imperfect aimings and scarce discernable what they are meant for unless the Master guide his Scholars hand Much more
it is handled and on occasion return a look back upon it when it may stand him in stead If he thinks this diligence too burthensom let him consider that the writing hereof has cost the Author much more pains Who as he will esteem them exceedingly well employ'd if they may contribute ought to the content or advantage of any free and ingenuous mind so if any others shall express a neglect of what he has with so much labour hew'd out of the hard Rock of Nature or shall discourteously cavil at the Notions he so freely imparts to them all the resentment he shall make therof will be to desire the first to consider that their slight esteem of his Work obliges them to entertain their thoughts with some more noble and more profitable subject and better treated than this is and the Later sort to justifie their dislike of his doctrine by delivering a fairer and more complete body of Philosphy of their own Which if hereupon they do his being the occasion of the ones bettering themselvs and of the others bettering the world will be the best success he can wish his Book To Sir KENELME DIGBY ON His two Incomparable Treatises OF PHILOSOPHY TRuth 's numerous Proselytes in such pompous state With captiv'd judgments on your Triumph wait And mov'd by your clear Copy Wits so rare Blot out their former notions to write fair That 't were a needless duty to set forth In paper-gageants your soul-conquering worth Nor may Truth 's Champion admit a Muse Who feigns his commendation 's but abuse Unless Lucretius had bequeath'd to me His the sworn Maid to Dame Philosophy Yet ther 's a Law of gratitude which says He must pay thanks who may not offer praise When with your work you entertain'd my mind I was your Guest there I at once did find A Banquet and a Meal solid and sweet The rarely mingled in one dish did meet Such diet sure had Mankind scap't offence Had bin his meat i th' State of Ignorance And now I here give thanks which who 'll not give Who your perpetual Boarder means to live The reading your expressions forc't me speak A fancy thus charg'd needs must silence break Wherefore as Brooks to th' Sea return their streams I only here reflect your borrow'd beams Clear-faced Truth that rare unbodied light Sun to our souls wrap't in a sin-caus'd night Of ignorance who from her radiant face Darted forth nought but day had found no place In Nature's Lordships had not you in fine Plac't th' obscur'd Goddess in a Chrystal shrine We stood like men ere they begin the Mask Whose wit doth only serve to doubt and ask Untill your courteous hand remov'd the Screen Withdrew the curtains and reveal'd Truth 's Scene Some quite despairing in her quest did say She in Astraea's Coach was flown away Some said that Nature's work on purpose ti'd Like to the Gordian knot did â—ub'tly hide It's causes and effects none could unty't As if contriv'd to puzzle not delight But most avouch 't Truth in her old pit lay And our Cleantheses did oft assay With huge-long-Cart-rope Arguments to draw Her upwards with their Logick-clunched paw Bur ah their Syllogistick links all brake Yet th' obstinate peece would not her hole forsake Until your Silken Linos or deep Wit whether Reason'd not brawl'd her thence woo'd her hither Trim'd up thus natively she scorns the nighr Nor fears t'intrust her beauty to the light She through your Amber words doth brighter shine Like those in Heav'n at once both nak't and fine Clad in such Tiffany-language she grows proud To see her self in Cloathing without Cloud The Schools drest her in Linsy-Woolsy words A stile not spun of threds but writh'd of cords Expressive barbarisms fancy-woven air Whose uncouth moustrousness would make one stare An antick weed patch't up as they shall please Of Unionss Moods and Senoreities Who if they do not Priscian the disgrace To break his head they fouly scratch his face Tor'tring poor innocent Grammar to confess The truth they hide by their dark wordishness But no such stuff your noble Treatise wears It neither injures Languages nor ears Yours is a Flower-pot pav'd by Truth 's rich Gold While they in Dunghils rake for th' precious mold Your Stile 's both pure and gallant in such sort Iâ— makes the Schools speak finer than the Court With such enlihtning Metaphor as teach What sense-deluded fancy could not reach Such moving Rhetorick needs no Truth desire Such conquering Truths no Rhetorick's aid require Yet here both joyntl ' embrace as if it was Truth 's Legend writ by Sun-beams on clear Glass So that your Work all points of art affords Where equally are learn'd neat Truths true Words Fancy our Moon as Reason is our Sun Which wax't and wan'd still as she wandring run Whose visage with unconstant Aspects shone Now shuffling many things now cutting one Is taught at once 'to acknowledge and correct Her fault which gull'd the credulous Intellect And now at length is shown her double errour In the smooth steady Glass of Reason's mirrour Here Words whose whistle call'd us oft awry Are taught their Origin true sense and why Blind Prejudice cur'd by a blest amaze Opes wide her sullen eyes and stands at gaze All what the Universal Womb doth spawn Is by your Pen thence to the Life out-drawn Your Grounds are firm and sure who stirs the same May shake the World's or stronger Reason's frame Nature asserts them whose Daedalean hand Changing Particulars makes your Generals stand Here we may learn the antientest Descents And the cross Marriage of the Elements Whence Nature's numerous Family is bred In Kindred's different lines distinguished You show the secret gins the springs and wires Which the vast Engine 's motion requires You nought suppose but start your early quest Where Phoenix Nature first doth build her Nest Thence trace her laying hatching until she Brings her raw Embryo to maturity The sprouting Sap we without fiction see Creepingly metamorphos'd to a Tree We see how Eggs yield Flesh and Bone and Blood Like creatures peece-meal shap't in Nile's fat mud Our quivering grounds might have driv'n some perforce To believe A sop and grant beasts discourse Had not your Art the pretty Knack unscrew'd And it's wheeles driv'n by bloud in order shew'd Now their strange actions we may freel admire Yet not about an hidden Soul enquire No more than once Architas ' wooden Dove Ask't an Intelligence to make it move Imaginary Uacuums which are New terms for nothings emptier than air With Moods and Qualities now pack away To lurk at home in Terr' Incognita Crab'd Aristotle who did make 't his sporr Industrious wits should his obscureness court Whom like a darksome Cave none durst adventure Without a Lantern and a Guide to enter Your grounds enlightning him doth easier sound As Hebrew Conso'nants when the Points were found The Soul of Man that intellectual All Whose recreation is the World 's great Ball
Reading her self at large here doth descry An object worthy her far-spreading eye And of her nature such true notions frame That she salutes her self with a new name Here she may scan her Thoughts view either State How link't to matter how when Separate Through Fancie's glass her noble Essence spy A shoreless Sea of Immortality In which unbounded Main you sail so fast Till you both lose and find your self at last Yet Sir you 'r justly accused by this age Plain truths in difficulties to engage What needed you to such nice cost proceed A Quality at first word had done the deed But you may nobly pity them and grant Nought's easier than to be ignorant They take the surface of the doubt while you Laboriously first pierce then dig it through In moving questions Talk not Truth 's their aim As Lords start Hares not for the prey but game They spring then stoop at some slight Butter-fly Thus some in hunting only love the Cry This is the utmost art with which they 're stor'd To call Truth some unanswerable word Which holds the field untill some active wit Working at Fanci's mintage chance to hit Upon a quainter which cuts that in twain And triumphs till a third cleaves it again Thus these Tenedian Axes hew each other Like Cadmu's armed crop each slays his brother Since with Distinctions they so nicely pare They subtilize it quite away to air These Authors yet voluminously-vain Stuff Libraries With Monsters of their brain Whose fruitless toil is but the same or less To plant bryar-fields t' enlarge a wilderness How hard to rectifie that ravell'd clue On your own bottom winding't up a new Yet this you did by th'guidance of his light Who was your Plato you his Stagyrite Save that his Doctrine's such you could invent In Truth 's behalf no reason to dissent Even That Great Soul which fathoms th' Universe Doth to the center Natures entrails pierce Girdles the World and as a pair of beads On Reason's link the Starry bodies threads Uuspells the Heaven's broad volume views so clear Of active Angels th' higher Hemisphere And this of Bodies 'cause he first begun His search by studying Man their Horizon Whom Heaven reserves Divinity to weed From Words o'regrowing the Diviner Seed To use your own 'cause no expression's higher These sparks you kindled at his great fire And round about in thorow-light papers hurl'd Will shortly enlighten and enflame a World Iohn Serjeant FIRST TREATISE DECLARING THE NATURE and OPERATION OF BODIES CHAP. I. A Preamble to the whole discourse Concerning Notions in general IN delivering any Science the clearest and smoothest Method and most agreeable to Nature is to begin with the consideration of those things that are most Common and obvious and by the dissection of them to descend by orderly degrees and Sâ—epps as they lye in the way to the examination of the most Particular and remote ones Now in our present intended Survey of a Body the first thing which occurs to our Sense in the perusal of it is its Quantity bulk or magnitude And this seems to be conceiv'd by all Mankind so inseparable from a Body as that when a man would distinguish a Corporeal Substance from a Spiritual one which is accounted indivisible he naturally pitches on an apprehension of its having bulk and being solid tangible and apt to make impression on our outward senses according to that expression of Lucretius who studying Nature in a familiar and rational manner tells us Tangere enim tangi nisi Câ—rpus nulla potest res And therfore in our inquiry of Bodies we will observe that plain Method which Nature teaches us and begin with examining what Quantity is as being their first and primary affection and that which makes the things we treat of be what we intend to signifie by the name of Body But because there is a great 〈◊〉 of Apprehensions framed by learned men of the nature of Quantity though indeed nothing can be more plain and simple then it is in it self I conceive it will not be amiss before we enter into the explication of it to consider how the mystery of discoursing and expressing our Thoughts to one another by Words a prerogative belonging only to Man is order'd and govern'd among us that so we may avoyd those rocks which many and for the most part such as think they spin the finest threds suffer shipwrack against in their subtilest discourses The most dangerous of all which assuredly is when they confound the true and real Natures of things with the Conceptions they frame of them in their own minds By which fundamental miscarriage of their reasoning they fall into great errours and absurdities and whatever they build on so ruinous a foundation proves but useless cobwebs or prodigious Chymaeras 'T is true words serve to express things but if you observe the matter well you will perceive they do so onely according to the Pictures we make of them in our own thoughts and not according as the Things are in their proper natures Which is very reasonable it should be so since the Soul that gives the Names has nothing of the things in her but these Notions and knows not the Things otherwise then by these Notions and therefore cannot give other Names but such as must signifie the Things by mediation of these Notions In the Things all that belongs to them is comprised under one entire Entity but in Us there are fram'd as many several distinct formal Conceptions as that one Thing shews it self to us with different faces Every one of which conceptions seems to have for its object a distinct Thing because the Conception it self is as much sever'd and distinguish'd from another Conception or Image arising out of the very same Thing that begot this as it can be from any image painted in the understanding by an absolutely other Thing It will not be amiss to illustrate this matter by some familiar Example Imagin I have an Apple in my hand the same Fruit works different effects upon my several Senses my Eye tells me 't is green or red my Nose that it hath a mellow scent my Taste that it is sweet and my Hand that it is cold and weighty My Senses thus affected send messengers to my Phantasie with news of the discoveries they have made and there all of them make them several and distinct pictures of what enters by their doors So that my Reason which discourses on what it finds in my phantasie can consider greenness by it self or mellowness or sweetness or coldness or any other quality whatever singly and alone by it self without relation to any other that is painted in me by the same Apple in which none of these have any distinction at all but are one and the same Substance of the Apple that makes various and different impressions on me according to the various dispositions of my several Senses as hereafter we shall explicate at large But
in my mind every one of these Notions is a distinct Picture by it self and as much sever'd from any of the rest arising from the same apple as it would be from any impression or image made in me by a Stone or any other substance whatever that being entire in it self and circumscribed within its own circle is absolutely sequestred from any communication with the other So that what is but one entire thing in it self seems to be many distinct things in my understanding wherby if I be not very cautious and in a manner wrestle with the bent and inclination of my Understanding which is apt to refer the distinct and complete stamp it finds within it self to a distinct and complete original Character in the Thing I shall be in danger before I am aware to give actual Beings to the quantity figure colour smel tast and other accidents of the Apple each of them distinct one from another as also from the Substance which they clothe because I find the notions of them really distinguish'd as if they were different Entities in my mind And from thence I may infer there is no contradiction in nature to have the Accidents really sever'd from one another and to have them actually subsist without their Substance and such other mistaken subtilties which arise out of our unwary conceiting that things are in their own Natures after the same fashion as we consider them in our Understanding And this course of the minds disguising and changing the impressions it receives from outward objects into appearances quite differing from what the things are in their own real natures may be observ'd not only in multiplying Entities where in truth there is but one but also in a contrary manner by comprising several distinct Things under one single Notion which if afterwards it be reflected back upon the things themselvs is the occasion of exceeding great errours and entangles one in unsuperable difficulties As for example Looking upon several Cubes or Dyce wherof one is of gold another of lead a third of ivory a fourth of wood a fifth of glass and what other matter you please all these several things agree together in my Understanding and are there comprehended under one single notion of a Cube which like a Painter that were to designe them only in black and white makes one figure that represents them all Now if removing my consideration from this impression which the several cubes make in my understanding to the cubes themselvs I shall unwarily suffer my self to pin this one notion upon every one of them and accordingly conceive it to be really in them it will of necessity fall out by this misapplying of my intellectual notion to the real things that I must allow Existence to other entities which never had nor can have any in nature From this conception Plato's Idea's had their birth For finding in his understanding one Universal notion that agreed exactly to every Individual of the same Species or Substance which imprinted that notion in him and conceiving that the picture of any thing must have an exact correspondence with the thing it represents and not considering that this was but an imperfect picture of the individual that made it he thence conceiv'd there was actually in every individual Substance one universal Nature running through all of that species which made them be what they were And then considering that corporeity quantity and other accidents of Matter could not agree with this universal subsistent Nature he denyed all those of it and so abstracting from all materiality in his Idea's and giving them a real and actual subsistence in nature he made them like Angels whoce essences and formal reasons were to be the Essence and to give Existence to corporeal individuals and so each Idea was embodied in every individual of its species To which opinion and upon the same grounds Averroes lean'd in the particular of mens Souls Likewise Scotus finding in his understanding an Universal notion springing from the impression that Individuals make in it will have a like Universal in the thing it self so determining Universals to use his own language and terms to be à parte rei and expressing the distinction they have from the rest of the thing by the terms of actu formaliter sed non realiter and therby makes every individual comprise an universal subsistent nature in it Which inconvenience other modern Philosophers seeking to avoid will not alsow these Universals a real and actual subsistence but lend them only a fictitious Being so making them as they call them Eutia rationis But herein again they suffer themselvs to be carried down the stream before they are aware by the understanding which is apt to pin upon the objects the notions it finds within it self resulting from them and consider an Unity in the things which indeed is only in the Understanding Therfore one of our greatest cares in the guidance of our discourse and a continual and sedulous caution therin ought to be used in this particular where every errour is a fundamental one and leads into inextricable labyrinths and where that which is all our level to keep us upright and even our Understanding is so apt by reason of its own nature and manner of operation to make us slide into mistaking and errour And to summ up in short what this discourse aims at we must narrowly take heed left reflecting upon the notions we have in our mind we afterwards pin those aiery superstructures upon the material things themselvs that begot them or frame a new conception of the nature of any thing by the negotiation of our understanding upon those impressions which it self makes in us wheras we should acquiesce and be content with that natural and plain notion which springs immediately and primarily from the thing it self which when we do not the more we seem to excel in subtilty the further we go from reality and truth like an Arrow which being wrong levell'd at hand falls widest when shot in the strongest bow Now to come to another point that makes to our present purpose We may observe there are two sorts of language to express our notions by One belongs in general to all mankind and the simplest person that can but apprehend and speak sense is as much judg of it as the greatest Doctor in the Schools and in this the words express the things properly and plainly according to the natural conceptions that all people agree in making of them The other sort of language is circled in with narrower bounds and understood only by those that in a particular express manner have been train'd up to it and many of the words which are proper to it have been by the Authors of it translated and wrested from the general conceptions of the same words by some metaphor or similitude or allusion to serve their private turns Without the first manner of expressing our notions mankind could not live
the essence of Rarity and Density stands in the proportion of quantity to substance if we believe Aristole the greatest master that ever was of finding out definitions and notions and trust to the uncontroulable reasons we have brought in the precedent discourse This explication of Rarity and Density by the composition of substance with quantity may peradventure give little satisfaction to such as are not used to raise their thoughts above Physical and natural speculations who are apt to conceive there it no other composition or resolution but such as our senses shew us in compounding and dividing bodies according to quantitive parts Now this obliges us to shew that such a kind of composition and division as this must necessarily be allow'd of even in that course of doctrine which seems most contrary to ours To which purpose let us suppose that the position of Democritus or of Epicurus is true to wit that the original compositions of all bodies is out of very little ones of various figures all of them indivisible not Mathematically but Physically and that this infinite number of indivisibles floats in an immense ocean of vacuum or imaginary space In this position let any man who conceives their grounds may be maintained explicate how one of these little bodies is moved For taking two parts of vacuum in which this body successively is 't is clear that really and not only in my understanding 't is a difference in the said body to be now here now there wherfore when the body is gone thither the notion of being here is no more in the body and consequently is divided from the body And therfore when the body was here there was a composition between the body and its being here which seeing it cannot be betwixt two parts of Quantity must of necessity be such a kind of composition as we put between quantity and substance And certainly let men wrack their brains never so much they will never be able to shew how motion is made without some such composition and division upon what grounds soever they proceed And if then they tell us that they understand not how there can be a divisibility between substance and quantity we may reply that to such a divisibility two things are required first that the Notions of Substance and Quantity be different secondly that one of them may be Chang'd without the other As for the First 't is most evident we make an absolute distinction between their two notions both when we say that Socrates was bigger a Man than a Boy and when we conceive that milk or water while it boyles or wine while it works so as they run over the vessels they are in are greater and possess more place then when they were cool and quiet and fill'd not the vessel to the brim For however witty explications may seem to evade that the Same thing is now greater now lesser yet it cannot be avoided but that ordinary men who look not into Philosophy both conceive it to be so and in their familiar discourse express it so which they could not do if they had not different notions of the Substance and of the Quantity of the thing they speak of And though we had no such evidences the very names and definitions of them would put it beyond strife all men calling substance a Thing quantity Bigness and refering a Thing to Being as who would say that which is but Bigness to some other of like nature to which it is compar'd as that it is half as big twice as big or the like This then being unavoidable that the Notions are distinguish'd there remains no difficulty but only in the Second namely that the one may be Chang'd and the other not Which reason and demonstration convince as we have shew'd Wherfore if any shall yet further reply that they do not understand how such change is made we shall answer by asking them whether they know how the change of being sometimes here sometimes there is made by local motion in vacuum without a change in the body moved Which question if they cannot satisfie they must either deny that there is any local motion in vacuum or else admit a change in quantity without a change in substance for this latter is as evidently true as they suppose the former to be though the manner how they are effected be alike obscure in both and the reason of the obscurity the same in both With which we will conclude the present Chapter adding onely this note That if all Physical things and natural changes proceed out of the constitution of rare and dense bodies in this manner as we put them which the work we have in hand intends to shew then so manifold effects will so convince the truth of this doctrine we have declared that there can remain no doubt of it nor can there be any of the divisibility of quantity from substance without which this doctrine cannot consist For it cannot be understood how there is a greater proportion of quantity than of substance or contrariwise of substance then of quantity if there be not a real divisibility between quantity and substance And much less can it be conceiv'd that the same thing hath at one time a greater proportion of Quantity and at another time a less if the greater or lesser proportion be not separable from it that is if there be not a divisibility betwixt it and substance as well as there are different notions of them Which to prove by the proper principle belonging to this matter would require us to make a greater inrode into the very bowels of Metathysicks and to take a larger circuit then is fitting either for the subject or for the intended brevity of this Treatise CHAP. IV. Of the four first Qualities and of the four Elements THe subject of our discourse hitherto hath been three simple notions Quantity Rarity and Density Now it shall be to enquire if by compounding these with Gravity or Weight which is one of the specieses of Quantity above mentioned and of which I shall speak at large hereafter we may beget any further qualities and so produce the Four first Bodies call'd Elements Inimitation of Logitians who by compounding such propositions as of themselves are evident to mans nature as soon as they are proposed bring forth new knowledges which threds they still entermix and weave together till they grow into a fair piece And thus the Sciences they so much labour for and that have so great an extent result out of few and simple notions in their beginnings But before we fall to mingling and comparing them together I think it will not be amiss to set down and determine what kind of things we mean by rare and what by dense that when the names are agreed on we may slip into no errour by mistaking them So then though there be several considerations in regard of which rarity and density may be differently attributed to bodies yet
occur other arguments of no less importance to prove this verity than these we have already proposed CHAP. VII Two objections answer'd against light being fire with a more ample proof of its being such HAving then said thus much to perswade us of the corporeity of this subtile thing that so queintly plays with our eyes we will in the next place examine those objections that at the beginning we set down against its being a body and if after a through discussion of them we find they do in truth conclude nothing of what at the first sight they bear so great a shew of but that we shall be able perfectly to solve and enerve their force no body will think it rashness in us to crave leave of Aristotle that we may dissent from him in a matter that he has not look'd to the bottom of and whose opinion therin cannot be defended from plain contradictions and impossibilities 'T is true never any one man looked fo far as he into the bowels of nature he may be rightly termed the Genius of it and whoever follows his principles in the main cannot be led into errour but we must not believe that he or any man else who relies upon the strength and negotiation of his own reason ever had a priviledge of infallibility entail'd to all he said Let us then admire him for what he has deliver'd us and where he falls short or is weary in his search and suffers himself to be born down by popular opinions against his own principles which happens very seldom to him let us seek to supply and relieve him But to pursue our intent We will begin with answerin the third objection which is that if light were fire it must heat as well as enlighten where it shines There 's no doubt but it doth so as is evident by the weather-glasses and other artificiall musical instruments as Organs and Virginals that played by themselvs wâ—ch Cornelius Drebbel That admirable master of Mechanicks made to shew the King All which depends upon the rarefaction and condensation of some subtile body conserv'd in a cavity within the bulk of the whole instrument for assoon as the Sun shined they would have motion and play their parts And questionless that grew out of the rarefaction of the subtile liquor he made use of which was dilated assoon as the air was warmd by the Sun-beams Of whose operation it was so sensible that they no sooner left the Horizon but its motion ceased And if but a cloud came between the instrument and them the musick would presently go slower time And the ancient miracle of Memnons statue seems to be a juggling of the Ethiopian priests made by the like invention But though he and they found some spirituall and refined natter that would receive such notable impressions from so small alterations of temper yet it is no wonder that our gross bodies are not sensible of them for we cannot feel heat unless it be greater then that which is in our sense And the heat there must be in proportion to the heat of our bloud which is an high degree of warmth and therfore 't is very possible that an exceeding rarified fire may cause a far lesse impression of heat then we are able to feel Consider how if you set pure spirit of wine on fire and so convert it into actual flame yet it will not burn nor scarce warm your hand and then can you expect that the light of a candle which fills a great room should burn or warm you as far as it shines If you would exactly know what degree of heat and power of burning that light has which for example shines upon the wall in a great chamber in the midst wherof there stands a candle do but calculate what overproportion of quantitie all the light in the whole room bears to the quantity of the little flame at the top of the candle and that is the overproportion of the force of burning which is in the candle to the force of burning which is in so much light at the wall as in extension is equall to the flame of the candle Which when you have considered you will not quarrel at its not warming you at that distance although you grant it to be fire streaming out from â—e flame as from the spring that feeds it and extreamly dilated according to the nature of fire when it is at liberty by going so far without any other grosse body to imprison or clog it 'T is manifest that this rule of examining the proportion of burning in so much of the light as the flame is by calculating the proportion of the quantity or extension of all the light in the room to the extension of the flame of the candle and then comparing the flame of the candle to a part of light equall in extension unto it is a good and infallible one if we abstract from accidental inequalities since both the light and the flame are in a perpetual flux and all the light was first in the flame which is the spring from whence it continually flows As in a river where every part runs with a settled stream though one place be straighter and another broader yet of necessity since all the water that is in the broad place came out of the narrow it must follow that in equal portions of time there is no more water where it has the liberty of a larg channel then where the banks press it into a narrow bed so that there be no inequalities in the bottome In like manner if in a large stove a basin of water be converted into steam that rarified water which then fills the whole Stove is no more then what the Basin contain'd before and consequently the power of moistening which is in a foot 's extension for example of the stove wherein that steam is must be in proportion to the vertue of wetting in the foot extension of water as the quantity of that great room which the steam fills is to the quantity of the water contain'd in the basin For although the rarified water be not in every least part of that great place it seems to take up by reason that there is Air in which it must swim yet the power of wetting that was in the Basin of water is dilated through the whole room by the conjunction of the Myst or Dew to all the sensible parts of the Air that is in the room and consequently the power of wetting which is in any foot of that room is in a manner as much less then the power of wetting which was in the foot of water as if the water were rarified to the quantity of the whole room and no air were left with it And in the same manner it fares with dilated fire as it doth with dilated water with only this difference peradventure that Fire grows purer and more towards its own nature by dilatation whereas water becomes more mix'd and is carried
to which much more might be added but that we have already trespassed in length and I conceive enough is said to decide the matter an equal judge will find the ballance of the question to hang upon these termes that to prove the nature of light to be material corporeal are brought a company of accidents well known to be the proprieties of quantitie or bodies and as well known to be in light Even so far as that 't is manifest light in its beginning before it be dispersed is fire and if again it be gathered together it shews it self again to be fire And the receptacles of it are the receptacles of a body being a multitude of pores as the hardness and coldness of transparent things do give us to understand of which we shall hereafter have occasion to discourse On the contrary side whatever arguments are brought against lights being a body are only negative As that we see not any motion of light that we do not discern where the confines are between light and air that we see not room for both of them or for more lights to be together and the like which is to oppose negative proofs against affirmative ones and to build a doctrine upon the defect of our senses or upon the likeness of bodies which are extremely unlike expecting the same effects from the most subtile as from the most gross ones All which together with the authority of Aristotle his followers have turned light into darkness and made us almost deny the light of our own eyes Now then to take our leave of this important question let us return to the principles from whence we began and consider that Seeing Fire is the most rare of the Elements and very dry and that out of the former it hath that it may be cut into very small pieces and out of the later that it conserves its own figure and so is apt to divide what ever fluid body and joyning to these two principles that it multiplies extremely in its source It must of necessity follow that it sends out in great multitudes little small parts into the air and other bodies circumfused with great dilatation in a spherical manner And likewise that these little parts are easily broken and new ones still following the former are still multiplyed in straight lines from the place where they break Out of which 't is evident that of necessity it must in a manner fill all places and that no sensible place is so little but that fire wil be found in it if the medium be capacious As also that its extreme least parts will be very easily swallow'd up in the parts of the air which are humid and by their enfolding be as it were quite lost so as to lose the appearance of fire Again that in its reflections it will follow the nature of grosser bodies and have glidings like them which is that we call refractions That little streamings from it will cross one another in excessive great numbers in an unsensible part of space without hindering one another That its motion will be quicker then sense can judge of and therefore will seem to move in an instant or to stand still as in a stagnation That if there be any bodies so porous with little and thick pores as that the pores arrive near to equalling the substance of the body then such a body will be so fill'd with these little particles of fire that it will appear as if there were no stop in its passage but were all filled with fire and yet many of these little parts will be reflected And whatever qualities else we find in light we shall be able to derive them out of these principles and shew that fire must of necessity do what experience teaches us that light doth That is to say in one word it will shew us that fire is light But if fire be light then light must needs be fire And so we leave this matter CHAP. IX Of Local motion in common THough in the fifth Chapter we made only earth the pretender in the controversie aginst fire for superiority in activity and in very truth the greatest force of gravity appears in those bodies which are eminently earthy nevertheless both water and air as appears out of the 4. Chapter of the Elements do agree with earth in having gravity and gravity is the chief virtue to make them efficients So that upon the matter this plea is common to all the three Elements Wherfore to explicate this virtue wherby these three weighty Elements work let us call to mind what we said in the beginning of the last Chapter concerning local motion to wit that according as the body moved or the divider did more and more enter into the divided body so it joyn'd it self to some new parts of the Medium or divided body and did in like manner forsake others Whence it happens that in every part of motion it possesses a greater part of the Medium then it self can fill at once And because by the limitation and confinedness of every magnitude to just what it is and no more 't is impossible that a lesser body should at once equalize a greater it followes that this division or motion whereby a body attains to fill a place bigger then it self must be done successively that is it must first fill one part of the place it moves in then another and so proceed on till it have measur'd it self with every part of the place from the first beginning of the line of motion to the last period of it where the body rests By which discourse it is evident that there cannot in nature be a strength so great as to make the least or quickest moveable that is to pass in an instant or all together over the least place that can be imagin'd for that would make the moved body remaining what it is in regard of its bigness to equallize and fit a thing bigger then it is Therfore it is manifest that motion must consist of such parts as have this nature that whiles one of them is in being the others are not yet and as by degrees every new one comes to be all the others that were before do vanish and cease to be Which circumstance accompanying motion we call Succession And whatever is so done is said to be done in time which is the common measure of all succession For the change of situation of the Stars but especally of the Sun and Moon is observ'd more or less by all mankind and appears alike to every man and being the most known constant and uniform succession that men are used to is as it were by nature it self set in their way and offer'd them as fittest to estimate and judge all other particular successions by comparing them both to it and among themselves by it And accordingly we see all men naturally measure all other successions and express their quantities by comparing them to the
notable degree as for example to water makes then a great difference of a heavy bodies gravitation in it and accordingly we see a great difference between heavy bodies descending in water and in air though between two kinds of air none is to be observ'd their difference is so smal in respect of the density of the body that descends in them And therfore since an assured and certain difference in circumstances makes no sensible inequality in the affect we cannot expect any from such circumstances as we may reasonably doubt whether there be any inequality among them or no. Besides that if in any of the proposed cases a heavy body should gravitate more and be heavier one time than another yet by weighing it we could not discern it since the counterpoise which is to determine its weight must likewise be in the same proportion heavier then it was And besides weighing no other means remains to discover its greater graviation but to compare it to Time in its descent and I believe that in all such distances as we can try it in its inequalities will be no whit less difficult to be observ'd that way then any other Lastly to bend our discourse particularly to that instance of the objection where it is conceiv'd that if gravity or descending downwards of bodies proceeded from atoms striking on them as they move downwards it would follow that a stone or other dense body lying under shelter of a thick hard and impenetrable adamantine rock would have no impulse downwards and consequently would not weigh there We may note that no body whatever compacted by physical causes and agents can be so dense and imporous but that such atoms as these we speak of must be in them and in every part of them and every where pass through and through them as water doth through a sieve or through a spunge and this universal maxime must extend as far as the Sun or any other heat communicating with the Sun reaches and is found The reason whereof is because these atoms are no other thing but such extreme little bodies as are resolved by heat out of the main stock of those massie bodies upon which the Sun and heat do work Now then it being certain out of what we have heretofore said that all mixt bodies have their temper and consistence and generation from the mingling of fire with the rest of the Elements that compose them and from the concoction or digestion which fire makes in those bodies 't is evident that no mixt body whatever nor any sensible part of a mixt body can be void of pores capable of such atoms or be without such atoms passing through those pores which atoms by mediation of the air that likewise hath its share in such pores must have communication with the rest of the great sea of air and with the motions that pass in it And consequently in all and every sensible part of any such extreme dense and pretended inpenetrable body to the notice wherof we can arrive this percussion of atoms must be found and they will have no difficulty in running through nor by means of it in striking any other body lying under the shelter of it and thus both in from that hard body there must be stil an uninterrupted continuation of gravity or of descending towards the centre To which we may adde that the stone or dense body cannot lie so close to the rock that covers it but that some air must be between for if nothing were between they would be united and become one continued body and in that air which is a Creek of the great Ocean of air spread over the world that is every where bestrew'd with moving atoms and which is continually fed like a running stream with new air that drives on the air it overtakes no doubt but there are descending atoms as well as in all the rest of its main body and these descending atoms meeting with the stone must needs give some stroke upon it and that stroke be it never so little cannot chuse but work some effect in making the stone remove a little that way they go and that motion wherby the space is inlarg'd between the stone and the shelt'ring rock must draw in a greater quantity of air and atoms to strike upon it And thus by little and little the stone passes through all the degrees of tardity by which a descending body parts from rest which is by so much the more speedily done by how much the body is more eminent in density But this difference of time in regard of the atoms strokes only and abstracting from the bodies density will be insensible to us seeing as we have said no more is required of them but to give a determination downwards And out of this we clearly see the reason why the same atoms striking upon one body lying on the water make it sink and upon another they do not As for example if you lay upon the superficies of some water a piece of iron and a piece of cork of equal bigness and of the same figure the iron will be beaten down to the bottom and the cork will float at the top The reason wherof is the different proportions of the comparison of their densities with the density of water for as we have said the efficacy and force of descending is to be measured by that So then the strokes of the atoms being more efficatious upon water then upon cork because the density of water is greater then the density of cork considering the abundance of air that is harbor'd in the large pores of it it followes that the atoms will make the water go down more forcibly then they will cork But the density of iron exceeding the density of water the same strokes will make the iron descend faster then the water and consequently the iron must sink in the water and the cork will swim upon it And this same is the cause why if a piece of cork be held by force at the bottom of the water it will rise up to the top as soon as the violence is taken away that kept it down for the atoms strokes having more force on the water then on the cork they make the water sink and slide under it first a little thin plate of water and then another a little thicker and so by degrees more and more till it hath lifted the cork quite up to the top Fifthly it may be objected that these atoms do not descend always perpendicularly but somtimes slopingly and in that case if their strokes be the cause of dense bodies moving they should move sloping and not downward Now that these atoms descend somtimes slopingly is evident as when for example they meet with a stream of water or with a strong wind or even with any other little motion of the air such as carries feathers up and down hither and thither which must needs waft the atoms in some measure along
carried out of the force of that motion directly the contrary way till the force of gravity overcoming the velocity it must be brought back again to the perpendicular which being done likewise with velocity it must send it again towards the place from which it fell at the first And in this course of motion it must continue for a while every Undulation being weaker then other till at last it quite ceases by the course of nature setling the air in its due situation according to the natural causes that work upon it And in this very manner also is performed that Undulation we see in water when it is stir'd from the natural situation of its Spherical superficies Galileo hath noted that the time in which the Undulations are made which follow one another of their own accord is the same in every one of them and that as much time precisely is taken up in a pendants going a very short arch towards the end of its vibration as was in its going the greatest arch at the beginning of its motion The reason wherof seems strange to him and he thinks it an accident natural to the body out of its gravity and that this effect convinces it is not the air which moves such bodies Wheras in truth 't is clearly the air which causes this effect Because the air striving at each end where it is furthest from the force of the motion to quiet it self gets at every bout somwhat upon the space and so contracts that into a shorter arch That motion also which we call Refraction and is manifest to sense only in light though peradventure hereafter more diligent searchers of nature may likewise find in such other bodies as are called qualitie as in cold or heat c. is but a kind of Reflexion For there being certain bodies in which the passages are so well order'd with their resistences that all the parts of them seem to permit light passe through them and yet all seem to reflect it when light passes through such bodies it finds at the very entrance of them such resistences where it passes as serve it for a reflecting body and yet such a reflectent body as hinders not the passage through but only from being a staight line with the line incident Wherfore the light must needs take a ply as beaten from those parts towards a line drawn from the illuminant falling perpendicularly upon the resisting superficies and therfore is term'd by Mathematicians to be refracted or broken towards the perpendicular Now at the very going out again of the light the second superficies if it be parallel to the former must needs upon a contrary cause strike it the contrary way which is which is termed from the perpendicular But before we wade any deeper into this difficulty we cannot omit a word of the manner of explicating Refraction which Monsieur des Cartes uses so witty a one as I am sorry it wants success He therefore following the demonstration above given of Reflection supposes the superficies which a ball lights upon to be a thin linen cloth or some other such matter as will break cleanly by the force of the ball striking smartly upon it And because that superficies resists only one way therfore he infers that the velocity of the ball is lessen'd only one way and not the other so that the velocity of its motion that way in which it finds no resistance must be after the balls passage through the linnen in a greater proportion to the velocity which it has the other way were it finds resistance then it was before And therfore the ball will in less time arrive to its period on the one side then on the other and consequently lean towards that side to which the course wherin it findes no opposition carries it Which to shew how it is contrary to his own principle Let us conceive the cloth CE to be of some thickness and so draw the line OP to determine that thickness And let us make from B upon AL another Parallelogram like the Parallelogram AL whose Diameter shall be BQ And it must necessarily follow that the motion from B to Q if there were no resistance were in the same proportion as from A to B. But the proportion of the motion as from A to B is the proportion of CB to CA that is it goes in the same time faster towards D then towards M in proportion which CB hath to CA. By which account the resistance it has in the way towards D must also be greater then the resistance it has in the towards M in the proportion which CB has to CA and therfore the more tardicy must be in the way to D and not in the way to M and consequently the declination must be from E wards and to M wards For where there is most resistance that way likewise must the tardity be greatest and the declination must be from that way but which way the thickness to be passed in the same time is most that way the resistance is greatest and the thickness is clearly greater towards E then towards M therfore the resistance must be greatest towards E and consequently the declination from the line BL must be towards M and not towards E. But the truth is in his Doctrine the ball would go in a straight line as if there were no resistance unless peradventure towards the contrary side of the cloth at which it goes out into the free air For as the resistance of the cloth is greater in the way towards D then in the way towards M because it passes a longer line in the same time as also it did formerly in the air so likewise is the force that moves it that way greater then the force which moves it the other And therfore the same proportions that were in the motion before it came to the resisting passage will remain also in it at least till coming near the side at which it goes out the resistance be weakned by the thinness of the resistent there which because it must needs happen on the side that has least thickness the ball must consequently turn the other way where it findes greatest yielding and so at its getting out into the free air it will bend from the greater resistance in such manner as we have said above Neither do the examples brought by Monsieur des Cartes and others in the maintenance of this Doctrine any thing avail them for when a Canon Bullet shot into a River hurts the people on the other side 't is not caused by refraction but by reflection as Monsir des Cartes himself acknowledges and therfor has no force to prove any thing in refraction whose Laws are divers from those of pure reflection And the same answer servs against the instance of a Musket bullot shot at a mark under water which perpetually lights higher then the mark though exactly just aim'd at For we knowing that it is the nature of
not impossible for us to do by reason that Authors have not left us the circumstances upon which we might groūd our judgment concerning them so particularly described as were necessary nor our selves have met with the commodity of making such experiences and of searching so into their beds as were requisite to determine solidly the reasons of them And indeed I conceive that oftentimes the relations which others have recorded of their generation would rather mislead then assist us since it is very familiar in many men to magnifie the exactness of Nature in framing effects by phansie to themselvs when to make their Wonder appear more just they will not fail to set off their story with all advantageous circumstances and help out what wants a little or comes but near the mark But to come closer to our purpose that is to the figures of living things We see that the roots in the earth are all of them figured almost in the same fashion for the heat residing in the midd'st of them pushes every way and therupon some of them become round but others more long then round according to the temper of the ground or the season of the year or the weather that happens and this not onely in divers kinds of Roots but even in several of the same kind That part of the plant which mounts upwards for the most part round and long the cause wherof is evident For the juice which is in the middle of it working upwards because the hardness of the bark will not let it out at the sides and coming in more and more abundance for the reasons we have above deliver'd encreases that part equally every way but upwards and therfore it must be equally thick and broad and consequently round but the length will exceed either of the other dimensions because the juice is driven up with a greater force and in more quantity then it is to the sides Yet the broadness and thickness are not so exactly uniform but that they exceed a little more at the bottom then at the top which is occasion'd partly by the contracting of juice into a narrower circuit the further it is from the source and partly by reason of the Branches which shooting forth convey away a great part of the Juice from the main stock Now if we consider the matter well we shall find that what is done in the whole tree the very same is likewise done in every little leaf of it For a leaf consists of little branches shooting out from one greater branch which is in the middle and again other less branches are derived from those second branches and so still lesser and lesser till they weave themselvs into a close work as thick as that which we see women use to fill up with Silk or Crewel when in Tentwork they embroyder leafs or flowers upon Canvas And this again is cover'd and as it were glew'd over by the humour which sticking to these little thrids stops up every little vacuity and by the air is hardened into such a skin as we see a leaf consists of And thus it appears how an account may be given of the figure of the leafs as well as of the figure of the main body of the whole tree the little branches of the leaf being proportionate in figure to the branches of the tree itself so that each leaf seems to be the Tree in little and the figure of the leaf depending of the course of these little branches so that if the greatest branch of the Tree be much longer then the others the leaf will be a long one but if the lesser branches spread broad-ways the leaf will likewise be a broad one so far as even to be notch'd at the outsides round about it in great or little notches according to the proportion of the Trees Branches These Leafs when they first break out are foulded inwards in such sort as the smalness and roundness of the passage in the wood through which they issue constrains them to be where nevertheless the driness of their parts keep them asunder as that one leaf doth not incorporate it self with another But so soon as they feel the heat of the Sun after they are broken out into liberty their tender branches by little and little grow more straight the concave parts of them drawing more towards the Sun because he extracts and sucks their moysture from their hinder parts into their former that are more exposed to his beams and thereby the hinder parts are contracted and grow shorter and those before grow longer Which if it be in excess makes the leaf become crooked the contrary way as we see in divers flowers and in sundry leaves during the Summers heat witness the Ivie Roses full blown Tulips and all flowers in form of Bells and indeed all kinds of flowers whatever when the Sun hath wrought upon them to that degree we speak of and that their joyning to their stalk and the next parts thereto allow them scope to obey the impulse of those outward causes And when any do vary from this rule we shall as plainly see other manifest causes producing those different effects as now we do those working in this manner As for Fruits though we see that when they grow at liberty upon the Tree they seem to have a particular figure allotted them by nature yet in truth it is the order'd series of natural causes and not an intrinsecal formative virtue which breeds this effect as is evident by the great power which art hath to change their figures at pleasure wherof you may see examples enough in Campanella and every curious Gardener can furnish you with store Out of these and such like principles a man that would make it his study with less trouble of tediousness then that patient contemplator of one of natures little works the Bees whom we mention'd a while agone might without all doubt trace the causes in the growing of an Embryon till he discover'd the reason of every bones figure of every notable hole or passage in them of the Ligaments by which they are tied together of the membranes that cover them and of all the other parts of the body How out of a first Masse that was soft and had no such parts distinguishable in it every one of them came to be formed by contracting that Masse in one place by dilating it in another by moistning it in a third by drying it here hard'ning it there Ut his exordia primis Omnia ipse tener hominis concreverit orbis till in the end this admirable machine and frame of mans body was composed and fashioned up by such little and almost insensible steps and degres Which when it is look'd upon in bulk and entirely-formed seems impossible to have been made and sprung merely out of these principles without an Intelligence immediately working and moulding it at every turn from the beginning to the end But withall we cannot chuse but break
aversion from it immediately proceeds As when a dog sees a man that uses to give him meat the species of the man coming into his fansie calls out of his memory the others which are of the same nature and are former participations of that man as well as this fresh one is but these are joyn'd with spicies of meat because at other times they did use to come in together and therfore the meat being a good unto him and causing him in the manner we have said to move towards it it will follow that the dog will presently move towards that man and express a contentedness in being with him And this is the ground of all assuefaction in beasts and of making them capable of receiving any instructions CHAP. XXXV Of the material instruments of Knowledge and Passion Of the several effects of Passions Of Pain and Pleasure and how the vital spirits are sent from the brain into the intended parts of the body without mistaking their way TO conclude this great business which concerns all the mutations and motions that are made by outward Agents in a living creature it will not be amiss to take a short and general survey of the material instruments which concur to this effect Wherof the brain being principal or at least the first and next of the principals we may take notice that it contains towards the middle of its substance four concavities as some count them but in truth these four are but one great concavity in which four as it were divers rooms may be distinguished The nether part of these concavities is very unequal having joyn'd to it a kind of a net wrought by the entangling of certain little arteries and of small emanations from a Sinus which are interwoven together Besides this it is full of kernels which make it yet more uneven Now two rooms of this great concavity are divided by a little body somwhat like a skin though more fryable which of it self is clear but there it is somwhat dim'd by reason that hanging a little slack it somwhat shrivels together and this Anatomists call Septum lucidum or speculum and 't is a different body from all the rest that are in the brain This transparent body hangs as it were straightwards from the forehead towards the hinder part of the head and divides the hollow of the brain as far as it reaches into the right and the left ventricles This part seems to me after weighing all circumstances and considering all the conveniencies and fitnesses to be that and only that in which the fansie or common sense resides though Monsir des Cartes has rather chosen a kernel to place it in The reasons of my assertions are First that it is in the middle of the brain which is the most convenient situation to receive the messages from all our body that come by nervs some from before and some from behind Secondly that with its two sides it seems conveniently opposed to all such of our senses as are double the one of them sending its little messengers or atomes to give it advertisements on one side the other on the other side so that it is capable of receiving impression indifferently from both Again by the nature of the body it seems more fit to receive all differences of motion than any other body near it It is also most conformable to the nature of the eye which being our principal outward sense must needs be in the next degree to that which is elevated a strain above our outward senses Fifthly it is of a singular and peculiar nature wheras the kernels are many and all of them of the same condition quality and appearance Sixthly it is seated in the very hollow of the brain which of necessity must be the place and receptacle where the specieses and similitudes of things reside and where they are moved and tumbled up and down when we think of many things And lastly the situation we put our head in when we think earnestly of any thing favours this opinion for then we hang our head forwards as it were forcing the specieses to settle towards our forehead that from thence they may rebound and work upon this diaphanous substance This then supposed let us consider that the atomes or likenesses of bodies having given their touch upon this Septum or Speculum do thence retire back into the concavities and stick as by chance it happens in some of the inequalities they encounter with there But if some wind or forcible steam should break into these caves and as it were brush and sweep them over it must follow that these little bodies will loosen themselvs and begin to play in the vapour which fills this hollow place and so floting up and down come anew to strike and work upon the Speculum or fantasy Which being also a soluble body many times these atomes striking on it carry some little corporeal substance from it sticking upon them whence ensues that they returning again with those tinctures or participations of the very substance of the fantasy make us remember not only the objects themselvs but also that we have thought of them before Further we are to know that all the nervs of the brain have their beginnings not far from this speculum of which we shall more particularly consider two that are call'd the sixth pair or couple which pair has this singularity that it begins in a great many little branches that presently grow together and make two great ones contain'd within one skin Now this being the property of a sense which requires to have many fibers in it that it may be easily and vigorously strucken by many parts of the object lighting upon many parts of those little fibers it gives us to understand that this sixth couple hath a particular nature conformable to the nature of an extern sense and that the Architect who placed it there intended by the several conduits of it to give notice to some part they go to of what passes in the brain And accordingly one branch of this nerve reaches to the heart not only to the Pericardium as Galen thought but even to the very substance of the heart it self as later Anatomists have discover'd by which we plainly see how the motion which the senses make in the Speculum may be derived down to the heart Now therfore let us consider what effects the motions so convey'd from the brain will work in the heart First remembring how all that moves the heart is either pain or pleasure though we do not use to call it pain but grief when the evil of sense moves us only by memory and not by being actually in the sense and then calling to mind how pain as Naturalists teach us consists in some division of a nerve which they call Solutio continui and must be in a nerve for that no solution can be the cause of pain without sense nor sense be without nerves we may conclude
when Identity between two or more things Presents it self to our understanding it makes forces knowledg in our Soul Whence is manifest that the same power or Soul which in a Single Apprehension is possessed with the Entity or Unity of it is that very power or Soul which apply'd to Enuntiation knows or deemes knowing is nothing else but the Apprehending of manifest Identity in the extreams of Proposition or an effect immediately consequent out of it in the Soul that applyes it self to apprehend that Identity Which apprehension is made either by the force of the extreams apply'd immediately to one another or else by the application of them to some other thing which peradventure may require yet a further application to new apprehensions to make the Identity between the first extreams appear evidently Now as when Identity truly appears it makes evidence to our understanding and begets assured knowledge in our Soul so when there is only an apparent Identity but not a real one it happens that the understanding is quieted without evidence and our Soul is fraught with a wrong or slight belief instead of certain knowledg As for example 't is for the most part true that what Wise Men affirm is so as they say but because wise men are but men consequently not infallible it may happen that in some one thing the wisest men that are may miss though in most generally speaking they hit right Now if any one in a particular occasion should without examining the matter take this proposition rigorously and peremptorily that What wise men affirm is true and ther upon subsume with evidence that Wise men say such a particular thing and should thence proceed to believe it in this case he may be deceiv'd because the first proposition is not verily but only seemingly evident And this is the manner how that kind of deeming which is either opposed or inferiour to knowledg is bred in us to wit when either through temerity in such cases where we may it is just we should examine all particulars so carefully that no equivocation or mistake in any part of them be admitted to pass upon us for a truth and yet we do not or else through the limitedness imperfection of our nature when the minuteness variety of petty circumstances in a business is such as we cannot enter into an exact examination of all that belongs to that matter for if we should exactly discuss every slight particular we should never get through any thing of moment we settle our understanding upon grounds that are not sufficient to move determine it Now in some of these cases particularly in the later it may happen that the understanding it self is aware that it neither hath discover'd nor can discover evidence enough to settle its assent with absolute assurance and then it judges the belief it affords such a proposition to be but probable instead of knowledg hath but opinion concerning it Which Opinion appears to it more or less probable according as the motives it relyes on are stronger and weaker There remains yet another kind of deeming for us to speak of which though it ever fail of Evidence yet somtimes 't is better than Opinion for somtimes it brings certitude with it This we call Faith and it is bred thus when we meet with a man who knows somthing we do not if withal we be perswaded that he neither doth nor will tell a lye we then believe what he saith of that thing to be true Now according to the perswasion we have of his knowledge and veracity our belief is strong or mingled with doubt So that if we have absolute assurance and certainty that he knows the truth and will not lye then we may be assured that the faith we yield to what he saith is Certain as well as Evident Knowledge is Certain and admits no comparison with Opinion be it never so probable But so it may happen that we may be certainly assured that a man knows the truth of what he speaks and that he will not lye in reporting it to us for seeing no man is wicked without a cause that to tell a lye in a serious matter is a great wickedness If once we come to be certain that he hath no causes as it may fall out we may then it follows that we are assured of the thing which he reports to us Yet still such Faith falls short of the evidence of knowledg in this regard that its evidence sticks one degree on this side the thing it self and at the push in such a case we see but with anothers eyes and consequently if any opposition arise against our thought therabout 't is not the beams and light of the thing it self which strengthen us against such opposition but the goodness of the party upon whom we rely Before I goe any further I must needs remember one thing that our Masters teach us which is that Truth and Falshood are first found in Sayings or Enuntiations and that although Single Apprehensions are in our mind before these judgments yet are they not true or false themselvs nor is the understanding so by them To comprehend the reason of this maxime let us consider what truth and falshood are Surely Truth is nothing else but the conformity of the understanding with the things that make impression upon it and consequently Falshood is a disagreeing between our mind and those things If the Existence which the things have in us be agreeable to the Existence they have in themselvs then our Understanding is true otherwise it is false Now the natural perfection of our Soul or understanding is to be fraught with the rest of the whole World that is to have the knowledge of all things that are the knowledg of their essences natures proprieties operations and of whatever else belongs to them all in general and every one in particular but our Soul cannot be stored or fraught with any thing by other means then by her assent or deeming whence it follows that she cannot have her perfection till her deemings or judgments be perfect that is be agreeable to things in the world when they are so then are they true And this is the reason why Truth is the aim and perfection of the Soul Now then truth residing only in the assents and judgments of the Soul which are the traffick wherby she inriches her self with the rest of the world and they being framed by her discerning an Identity between two things which she expresses by affirming one of them of the other it follows that nothing can be true or false but where there is a composition of two extreams made by the ones being affirm'd of the other which is done only in Enuntiacions or judgments Whiles Single Apprehension assent to nothing and therfore settle no knowledge in the Soul and consequently are not capable of verity or falsity but are like Pictures
there were any defect in the consequence we should easily perceive it Whence it appears clearly that there is no parity between the deduction of our conclusion and that other which the objection urges that our Soul because it can know eternal things is also eternal for Eternity is a thing beyound our comprehension and therfore it ought not to be expected at our hands that we should be able to give an account where the brack is and to say the truth if knowledg be trken properly we do not know Eternity however by supernatural helps we may come to know it but in that case the helps are likely to be proportionable to the effect Neither are Negations properly known seeing there is nothing to be known of them And thus we see that these objections proceed from the equivocation of the word knowledg somtimes used properly othertimes apply'd abusively CHAP VIII Containing proofs out of our manner of proceeding to Action that our Soul is incorporeal I Doubt not but what we have already said hath sufficiently convinced our Souls being immaterial to whomsoever is able to penetrate the force of the arguments we have brought for proof therof and will take the pains to consider them duly which must be done by serious and continued reflection and not by cursory reading or by interrupted attempts yet since we have still a whole field of proofs untouch'd and in so important a matter no evidence can be too clear nor any pains be accounted lost that may redouble the light although it shine already bright enough to discern what we seek we will make up the concert of unanimous testimonies to this already establish'd truth by adding those arguments we shall collect out of the maner ofour Soulsproceeding to action to the others we have drawn from our observations upon her Apprehensions her Judgments and her Discourses Looking then into this matter the first consideration we meet with is that our Understanding is in her own nature an orderer that her proper work is to rank to put things in order For if we reflect on the works and arts of men as a good life a common-wealth an army a house a garden all artefacts what are they but compositions of well order'd parts And in every kind we see that he is the Master the Architect is accounted the wisest to have the best understanding who can best or most or further than his fellows set things in order If then to this we joyn that Quantity is a thing whose nature consists in a capacity of having parts and multitude and consequently is the subject of ordering and ranking doth it not evidently follow that our Soul compared to the whole mass of bodies to the very nature of corporeity or quantity is as a proper agent to its proper matter to work on Which if it be it must necessarily be of a nobler strain of a different higher nature than it and consequently cannot be a body or be composed of Quantity for had matter in it self what it expects and requires from the agent it would not need the agents help but of it self were fit to be an Agent Wherfore if the nature of corporeity or of body in its full latitude be to be order'd it follows that the thing whose nature is to be an orderer must as such be not a body but of superiour nature and exceeding a Body which we express by calling it a spiritual thing Well then if the Soul be an orderer two things belong necessarily to her one is that she have this order within her self the other that she have power to communicate it to such things as are to be order'd The first she hath by Science of which enough already hath been said towards proving our intent Next that her nature is communicative of this order is evident out of her action and manner of working But whether of her self she be thus communicative or by her conjunction to the Body she informs appears not from thence But where experience falls short Reason supplies and shews us that of her own nature she is communicative of order For since her action is an ordering and in this line there are but two sorts of things in the world namely such as order and such as are to be order'd 't is manifest that the action must by nature and in the universal consideration of it begin from the orderer in whom order hath its life and Subsistence and not from that which is to receive it then since ordering is motion it follows evidently that the Soul is a mover and begInner of motion But since we may conceive two sorts of movers the one when the agent is moved to move the other when of it self it begins the motion without being moved we are to enquire to which of these two the Soul belongs But to apprehend the question rightly we will illustrate it by an example Let us suppose that some action is fit to begin at ten of the clock Now we may imagine an agent to begin this action in two different manners one that the clock striking ten breeds or stirrs somwhat in him from whence this action follows the other that the agent may of his own nature have such an actual comprehension or decurrence of time within himself as that without receiving any warning from abroad but as though he mov'd and order'd the clock as well as his own instruments he may of himself be fit and ready just at that hour to begin that action not as if the clock told him what hour it is but as if he by governing the clock made that hour to be as well as he causes the action to begin at that hour In the first of these manners the agent is moved to move but in the second he moves of himself without being moved by any thing else And in this second way our Soul of her own nature communicates her self to quantitative things and gives them motion which follows out of what we have already proved that a Soul in her own nature is the subject of an infinite knowledg and therfore capable of having such a general comprehension as well of time the course of all other things as of the particular action she is to do and consequently stands not in need of a Monitor without her to direct her when to begin If then it be an imprevaricable law with all bodies that none whatever can move unless it be moved by another it follows that the Soul which moves without being stirr'd or excitated by any thing elseis of a higher race than they and consequently is immaterial and void of Quantity But let me not be mistaken in what I come from saying as though my meaning were that the Soul exercises this way of moving her self and of ordering her actions while she is in the Body for how can she seeing she is never endew'd with compleat knowledg requisite for any action never fully
them we have not been able to carry these grounds nor they us Let him then take the pains to shew us by what Figures by what First Qualities by what Mixtion of Rare and Dense parts an Universal Apprehension an evident Judgment a legitimate Consequence is made and the like of a mans determination of himself to answer pertinently any question of his choosing this way before that c. Which if he can do as I am sure he cannot I shall allow it to be reason and not obstinacy that works in his mind and carrys him against our Doctrine But if he cannot and that there is no appearance nor possibility as indeed there is not that these actions can be effected by the ordering of material parts and yet he will be still unsatisfy'd without being able to tell why for he will be unwilling to acknowledg that these abstracted Speculations do not sink into him and that nothing can convince him but what his Senses may be judges of and he may handle and turn on every side like a brick or tile and will be still importune with cavillous scruples and wild doubts that in truth and at the bottome signifie nothing we will leave him to meditate at his leisure upon what we have said while we proceed on to what follows out of this great principle That Our Soul is Incorporeal and Spiritual CHAP. IX That our Soul is a Substance and Immortal HAving concluded that our Soul is immaterial and indivisible to proceed one step further it cannot be deny'd but that it is either a Substance or an Accident If the later it must be of the nature of the substance whose accident it is for so we see all accidents are but in man when his Soul is excluded there is no spiritual substance at all wherof we have any notice and therfore if it be an accident it must be a corporeal one or some accident of a body as some figure temperature harmony or the like and consequently divisible but this is contrary to what is proved in the former Chapters and therefore it cannot be a corporeal accident Neither can it be a spiritual accident for to what spiritual substance should it belong when as nothing in man can be suspected to be spiritual but it self Seeing then that it can be no accident a substance it must be and must have its Existence or Being in it self Here we have passed the Rubicon of experimental knowledg we are now out of the bounds that experience hath any jurisdiction over and from henceforth we must in all our searches and conclusions rely only upon the single evidence of Reason And even this last conclusion we have been fain to deduce out of the force of abstracted reasoning upon what we had gather'd before not by immediate reflection upon some action we observe proceeding from a man yet withal nature flashes out by a direct beam some little glimmering of the verity of it to the eye of Reason within us For as when we see a Clock move or a Mill or any thing that goes by many wheels if we mark that there are two contrary motions in two divers parts of it we cannot think that those contrary motions belong to one and the same continued body but shall presently conclude there must be in that Engine two several bodies compacted together So in Man though his Body be the first mover that appears to us yet seeing that in his actions some effects shew themselvs which 't is impossible should proceed from a Body 't is evident that in him there is some other thing besides that one which we see And consequently we may conclude that he is composed of a Body and somwhat else that is not-a-Body which somewhat else being the spring from whence those actions flow that are of a different strain from those derived from the body must necessarily be a Spiritual Substance But while we are examining how far our present considerations and short discourses may carry us as it were experimentally to confirm this truth we must not omit what Avicenna in his Book De Anima Almahad and Monsier des Cartes in his Method press upon the same occasion Thus they say or to like purpose If I cast with my self who I am that walk or speak or think or order any thing my reason will answer me that although my legs or tongue were gone and that I could no longer walk or speak yet were not I gone and I should know and see with my understanding that I were still the very same thing the same Ego as before The same as of my tongue or legs would reason tell me of my eys my ears my smelling tasting and feeling either all of them together or every one of them single that were they all gone still should I remain As when in a dream where I use none of all these I both am and know my self to be Reason will tell me also that although I were not nourished so I were not wasted which for the drâ—ft of the argument may be supposed yet still I should continue in Being Whence it would appear that my heart liver lungs kidneys stomach mouth and what other parts of me soever that serve for the nourishment of my body might be sever'd from me and yet I remain what I am Nay if all the beautiful and airy fantasms which fly about so nimbly in our brain be nothing else but signs to and in our Soul of what is without us 't is evident that though peradventure she would not without their service exercise that which by error we mis-name Thinking yet the very same Soul and Thinker might be without them all and consequently without brain also seeing that our brain is but the play-house and scene where all these faery masks are acted So that in conclusion Reason assures us that when all Body is abstracted in us there still remains a Substance a Thinker an Ego or I that in it self is no whit diminished by being as I may say strip'd out of the case it was inclos'd in And now I hope the intelligent Reader will conceive I have perform'd my promise and shewed the Soul of man to be an Immortal Substance For since it is a Substance it hath a Being and since it is an immaterial Substance it hath a Being of its own force without needing a consort body to help it sustain its Existence for to be a substance is to be the subject of Existence and consequently to be an immaterial substance is to be a subject capable of Existence without the help of matter or Quantity It cannot therfore be required of me to use any further industry to prove such a Soul immortal but who will contradict her being so is obliged to shew that she is mortal for it follows in reason that she will keep her Being unless by some force she be bereav'd of it It being a rule that whoever puts a thing to be is
absolutely necessary that the Soul must have here so much knowledg as to be able to determine that some one thing which hath connexion with all the rest is in such a time Bâ—t then why out of this very conception she should not be able to climb up by degrees to the knowledg of all other things whatever since there is a connexion between that and all the rest and 〈◊〉 untransible Gap or Chaos â—o 〈◊〉 them I prâ—ess I do nâ— see Which if it be so then the 〈◊〉 of an Abortive in his Mothers Womb if he once arrive to have Sense and from it to receive any impression in his Soul may for ought I know or can suspect to the contrary be endew'd in the next world with as much knowledg as the Soul of the greatest Clerk that ever lived and if an abortive do not arrive so far as to the knowledg of some one thing I know no reason why we should believe it arrived to the Nature of Man Whence it follows that this amplitude of knowledg is common to All Humane Souls of what pitch soever they seem to be here when they are separated from their Bodies as also that if any Error have crept into a mans judgment during this life whether it be of some universal conclusion or of some particular thing all such will be abolish'd then by the Truth appearing on the opposite side since two contradictory judgments cannot possess our Soul together as even in this world as well Experience as Reason teaches us But unawares I have engulf'd my self into a Sea of contradictions from no mean Adversaries for Alexander Aphrodiseus Pomponatius and the learnedest of the Peripatetick School will all rise up in main opposition against this doctrine of mine Shewing how in the Body all our Soul's knowledg is made by the working of our fansy and that there is no act of our Soul without speculation of fantasms residing in our memory therfore since when our Body is gone all those little Bodies of fantasms are gone with it what sign is there that any operation can remain And hence they infer that since every substance hath its Being for its operations sake and by consequence were vain and superfluous in the world if it could not enjoy and exercise its operation there is no necessity or end why the Soul of a man should survive his Body and consequently there is no reason to imagine other than that it perishes when the man dies This is the substance of their Argument which indeed is nothing else but to guess without ground or rather against all ground But however this is my comfort that I have to do with Peripateticks men that will hear and answer reason and to such I address my speech To joyn issue then with them and encounter them with their own weapons let us call to mind what Aristotle holds Light to be He saith that it is A suddain and momentary emananation of what it is following the precedent motion of some body but without motion in it self As for example when the Sun comes into our Horison says he the illumination of the Horison is an effect in an instant following from the motion which the Sun had since his setting in the other Hemisphere till he appear there again So that according to him the way of making this light is the Sun 's local motion but the effect or the being enlightned is a thing of a very different nature done without begining and continuing till the Sun depart again from our Horison And he explicates this action of illumination in the same manner doth he the actions of Sense and of Understanding Upon all which I urge that no Peripatetick will deny me but that as in every particular sensation or thinking there precedes a Corporal motion out of which it ensues so this general motion which we call the life of man precedes that twinkle or moment in which his Soul becomes an absolute spirit or inhabitant of the next world Wherfore it cannot be said that we introduce a doctrine aliene from the Peripatetical way of Philosophising if we put a momentary effect or motion according to their phrase of speaking to follow out of the course of Mans Life since they put diverse such effects to follow out of particular parts of it Now this momentary change or what they please to call it is that which makes at one blow all this knowledg we speak of For if we remember that knowledg is not a doing or motion but a Being as is agreed between the Peripateticks and us they cannot for the continuing it require inâ—uments and motors for they are necessary only for change not for Being Now all this mighty change which is made at the Souls delivery we conceive follows precisely out of the change of her Being For seeing it is supposed that her Being was before in a Body but is now out of a Body it must of necessity follow that all impediments which grew out of her being in a Body must be taken away by her being freed from it Among which impediments one is that Time is then required betwixt her knowledg of one thing and her knowledg of another thing and so her capacity that of it self is infinite becomes confined to that small multitude of objects which the division and straightness of time gives way to Now that which length of time could impart work in the body the same is intirely done in a moment by the changing of her manner of Being for by taking away the bonds by which she was enthrall'd in the body kept in to apprehend but according to its measure and constrain'd to enjoy her self as it were but at the Bodies permission she is put in free possession of her self and of all that is in her And this is nothing else but to have that large knowledg we have spoken of for her knowing all that is no other thing but her being her self perfectly Which will appear evident if we consider that her nature is to be a Knower and that Knowledg is nothing else but a Being of the Object in the Knower for thence it follows that to know all things is nought else but to be all things since then we concluded by our former discourse that all things were to be gather'd out of any one 't is clear that to be perfctly her self and any one thing is in truth to know all things And thus we see that for the Soul 's enjoying all this knowledg when she is out of the Body she needs no objects without her no phantasms no instruments no helps but that all that is requisite is contain'd absolutely in her being her self perfectly And so we retort our Adversaries Objection on themselvs by representing to them that since in their own Doctrine they require no body nor instruments for that precise action which they call Understanding it is without all ground for them to require bodies and instruments in the next life that the
side an Incorporated Soul by reason of her being confined to the use her Senses can look on but one single definite place or time at once and needs a long chain of many discourses to comprehend all the circumstances of any one action and yet after all how short is she of comprehending all So that comparing one of these with the other 't is evident that the proportion of a Separated Soul to one in the Body is as all time or all place in respect of any one piece or least parcel of them or as the entire absolute comprehender of all time and all place is to the discoverer of a small measure of them For whatever a Soul wills in that state she wills it for the whole extent of her duration because she is then out of the state or capacitity of changing and wishes for whatever she wishes as for her absolute good and therfore employs the whole force of her judgment upon every particular wish Likewise the eminencie which a Separated Soul hath over place is also then entirely employ'd upon every particular wish of hers since in that state there is no variety of place left her to wish for such good in one place and to refuse it in another as while she is in the Body hapneth to every thing she desires Wherefore whatever she then wishes for she wishes for it according to her comparison to place that is to say that as such a Soul hath a power to work at the same time in all places by the absolute comprehension which she hath of place in abstract so every wish of that Soul if it were concerning a thing to be made in place were able to make it in all places through the excessive force and efficacy which she employs upon every particular wish The third effect by which among bodies we gather the vigour and energy of the cause that produces it to wiâ— the doing of the like action in a lesser time in a larger extent is but a combination of the two former 〈◊〉 therfore it requires no further particular insistance upon it to shew tha◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this the proportion of a Separated to an 〈◊〉 Soul must needs be the self same as in the other seeing a Separated Soul's activity is upon all place is in an Indivisible of time Therfore to shut up this point there remains only for us to consider what addition may be made to the efficacity of a judgment by the concurrence of other extrinsecal helps We see that when an understanding man will settle any judgment or conclusion in his mind he weighs throughly all that follows out of such a judgment and considers likewise all the antecedents that lead him to iâ— and if after due reflection and examination of whatever concerns this conclusion which he is establishing in his mind he finds nothing to cross it but that every particular and circumstance goes smoothly along with and strengthens it he is then satisfied and quiet in his thoughts and yields a full assent therto which assent is the stronger the more concurrent testimonies he has for it And though he should have a perfect demonstration or sight of the thing in it self yet every one of the other extrinsecal proofs being as it were a new perswasion hath in it a further vigour to strengthen and content his mind in the fore-had demonstration for if every one of these be in it self sufficient to make the thing evident it cannot happen that any one of them should hinder the others but contrariwise every one of them must needs concurr with all the rest to the effectual quieting of his understanding in its assent to that judgment Now then according to this rate let us calculate if we can what concurrence of proofs and witnesses a Separated Soul will have to settle and strengthen her in every one of her judgments We know that all verities are chain'd and connected one to another and that there is no true conclusion so far remote from any other but may by more or less consequences and discourses be deduced evidently out of it it follows then that in the abstracted Soul where all such consequences are ready drawn and seen in themselvs without extention of time or employing of pains to collect them every particular verity bears testimony to any other so that every one of them is believ'd and works in the sence and virtue of all Out of which it is manifest that every judgment in such a Separated Soul hath an infinite strength and efficacity over any made by an embodyed one To sum all up in a few words We find three roots of infinity in every action of a Separated Soul compar'd to one in the Body First the freedom of her essence or substance it self Next that quality of hers by which she comprehends place and time that is all permanent and successive quantity and Lastly the concurrence of infinite knowledges to every action of hers Having then this measure in our hands let us apply it to a Well-order'd and to a Disorder'd Soul passing out of this world let us consider the oneset upon those goods which she shall there have present and shall fully enjoy the other languishing after and pining away for those which are impossible for her ever to obtain What joy what content what exultation of mind in any living man can be conceiv'd so great as to be compared with the happiness of one of these Souls And what grief what discontent what misery can be like the others These are the different effects which the divers manners of living in this world cause in Souls after they are deliver'd from their Bodies Out of which and the discourse that hath discover'd these effects to us we see a clear resolution of that so main and agitated question among the Philosophers Why a rational Soul is imprison'd in a gross Body of Flesh and Blood In truth the question is an illegitimate one as supposing a false ground for the Soul 's being in the Body is not an imprisonment of a thing that was existent before the Soul and Body met together but her being there is the natural course of begining that which can no other way come into the lists of nature For should a Soul by the course of nature obtain her first being without a Body either she would in the first instant of her being be perfect in knowledg or she would not if she were then would she be a perfect compleat immaterial substance not a Soul whose nature is to be a copartner to the Body and to acquire her perfection by the medâ—ation and service of corporeal senseâ— but if she were not perfect in Science but were only a capacity therto and like white paper in which nothing were yet written then unless she were 〈◊〉 into a Body she could never arrive to know any thing because motion alteration are effects peculiar to Bodies Therfore 〈◊〉 be agreed that she is naturally
atome of thy vast greatness and with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning we have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light which invirons and swells thee or rather which is thee 't is high time I should retire my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife and litigious disputation to make my accounts with thee where no outward noise may distract nor any thing intermeddle between us excepting only that Eternal Verity which by thee shines upon my faint and gloomy eys and in which I see whatever doth or can content thee in me I have discover'd that thou my Soul wilt survive me and so survive me as thou wilt also survive the mortality and changes which belong to me and which are but accidentary to thee meerly because thou art in me Then shall the vicissitude of time and the inequality of dispositions in thee be turn'd into the constancy of immortality and into the evenness of one being never to end and never to receive a change or succession to better or worse When my eye of Contemplation hath been fix'd on this brâ—ght Sun as long as it is able to endure the radiant beams of it whose redundant light veils the looker on with a dark mist let me turn it for a little space upon the straight passage and narrow gullet through which thou strivest my Soul with faint and weary steps during thy hazardous voyage upon the earth to make thy self away And let me examine what comparison there is between thy two conditions the present one wherin thou now findest thy self immersed in flesh and blood and the future state that will betide thee when thou shall be melted out of this gross oar and refined from this mean alloy Let my term of life be of a thousand long years longer than ever hap'ned to our aged forefathers who stored the earth with their numerous progeny by out-living their skill to number the diffused multitudes that swarm'd from their loins Let me during this long space be sole Emperor and absolute Lord of all the huge globe of land and water compassed with Adam's offspring Let all my subjects ly prostrate at my feet with obedience and aw distilling their active thoughts in studying day and night to invent new pleasures and delight for me Let Nature conspire with them to give me a constant and vigorous health a perpetual spring of Youth that may to the full relish whatever good all they can fancy Let gravest Prelates and greatest Princes serve instead of flatterers to highten my joys and yet those joys be rais'd above their power of flattery Let the Wisedom of this vast Family whose sentiments are maxims and oracles to govern the worlds beliefs and actions esteem reverence and adore me in the secretest and most recluse withdrawings of their hearts Let all the Wealth which to this very day hath ever been torn out of the bowels of the Earth and all the Treasures which the Sea hides from the view of greedy men swel round about me whilst all the world besides lyes gaping to receive the crums that fall neglected by me from my full loaden table Let my imagination be as vast as the unfathomed Universe and my felicity as accomplish'd as my imagination can reach to so that wallowing in pleasure I be not able to think how to increase it or what to wish for more than that which I possess and enjoy Thus when my thoughts are at a stand can raise my present happiness no higher let me call to mind how this long Lease of pleasant dayes will in time come to an end this bottom of a thousand joyful years will at length be unwound and nothing remain of it and then my Soul thy infinitly-longer-lived Immortality will succeed thy never ending date will begin a new account impossible to be sum'd up and beyond all proportion infinitly exceeding the happiness we have rudely aim'd to express so that no comparison can be admited between them For suppose First that such it were as the least and shortest of those manifold joys which swel it to that height we have fancy'd were equal to al the contentment thou shouldst enjoy in a whole million of years yet millions of years may be so often multiply'd as at length the slender and limited contentments supposed in them may equalize and out go the whole heap of overflowing bliss rais'd so high in the large extent of these thousand happy years Which when they are cast into a total sum and I compare it with the unmeasurable Eternity which only measures thee then I see that all this huge product of Algebraical multiplication appears as nothing in respect of thy remaining and never-ending survivance is less than the least point in regard of the immense Universe But then if it be true as it is most true that thy least spark and moment of real happiness in that blessed Eternity thou hopest for is infinitely greater and nobler than the whole mass of fancyed joys of my thousand years life here on earth how infinitely wil the value of thy duration exceed all proportion in regard of the felicity I had imagined my self And seeing there is no proportion between them let me sadly reflect on my own present condition let me examine what it is I so busily and anxiously employ my thoughts and precious time upon let me consider my own courses and whither they lead me let me take a survey of the lives and actions of the greatest part of the world which make so loud a noise about my ears And then may I justly sigh out from the bottom of my anguished heart To what purpose have I hitherto lived To what purpose are all these millions of toilsome Ants that live and labour about me To what purpose were Caesar's and Alexander's To what purpose Aristotle's and Archimedes's How miserably foolish are those conquering Tyrants that divide the world with their lawless Swords What sensless Idiots those acute Philosophers who tear mens wits in pieces by their different ways and subtile Logick striving to shew men Beatitudes in This World seeking for that which if they had found were but a nothing of a nothing in respect of true Beatitude He only is wise who neglecting all that flesh blood desires endeavors to purchase at any rate This Felicity which Thy survivance promises the least degree of which so far surmounts all the heaps which the Giants of the earth are able to raise by throwing hills on hills and striving in vain to scale and reach those eternities which reside above the Skies Alas how fondly doth mankind suffer it self to be deluded How true it is that the only thing necessary proves the only that is neglected Look up my Soul and fix thine eye upon that truth which eternal light makes so clear to thee shining upon thy face with so great evidence as defies the noon-tide Sun in its greatest brightness And this it is