words: "Si cor, aut sanguis, aut cerebrum est animus, certe, quoniam est corpus, interibit cum reliquo corpore; si anima est, forte dissipabitur; si ignis, extinguetur." Tusc. Quæst. 1. i. c. 11. Here Cicero opposes corpus to ignis and anima, i. e. aura or breath: and the foundation of that his distinction of the soul, from that which he calls corpus or body, he gives a little lower in these words; "tanta ejus tenuitas, ut fugiat aciem." ib. c. 22. Nor was it the heathen world alone that had this notion of spirit; the most enlightened of all the ancient people of God, Solomon himself, speaks after the same manner: "That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other, yea they have all one spirit." So I translate the Hebrew word here, for so I find it translated the very next verse but one; +Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth down to the earth?" In which places it is plain that Solomon applies the word, and our translators of him, the word spirit, to a substance, out of which immateriality was not wholly excluded, "unless the spirit of a beast that goeth downwards to the earth" be immaterial. Nor did the way of speaking in our Saviour's time vary from this St. Luke tells us, that when our Saviour, after his resurrection, stood in the midst of them, they were affrighted, and supposed that they had seen vua," the Greek word which always answers spirit in English; and so the translators of the Bible render it here," they supposed that they had seen a spirit." But our Saviour says to them, "$Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have." Which words of our Saviour put the same distinction between body and spirit, that Cicero did in the place above cited, viz. that the one was a gross compages that could be felt and handled; and the other such as Virgil describes the ghost or soul of Anchises, 66 * Eccles. iii. 19. † Ver. 21. Chap. xxiv. 37. § Ver. 39. "Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum; I would not be thought here to say, that spirit never does signify a purely immaterial substance. In that sense the scripture, I take it, speaks, when it says, "God is a spirit;" and in that sense I have used it; and in that sense I have proved from my principles, that there is a spiritual substance; and am certain that there is a spiritual immaterial substance: which is, I humbly conceive, a direct answer to your lordship's question in the beginning of this argument, viz. "How come we to be certain that there are spiritual substances, supposing this principle to be true, that the simple ideas by sensation and reflection are the sole matter and foundation of all our reasoning?" But this hinders not, but that if God, that infinite, omnipotent, and perfectly immaterial spirit, should please to give a system of very subtile matter sense and motion, it might, with propriety of speech, be called spirit; though materiality were not excluded out of its complex idea. Your lordship proceeds: "It is said indeed elsewhere, that it is repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge. But this doth not reach the present case; which is not what matter can do of itself, but what matter prepared by an omnipotent hand can do. And what certainty can we have that he hath not done it? We can have none from the ideas, for those are given up in this case; and consequently we can have no certainty upon these principles, whether we have any spiritual substance within us or not." If Your lordship in this paragraph proves, that from what I say, "we can have no certainty whether we have any spiritual substance in us or not t." by spiritual substance your lordship means an immaterial substance in us, as you speak a little farther on, I grant what your lordship says is true, that + Ibid. B. iv. c. 10. § 5. it cannot, upon these principles, be demonstrated. But I must crave leave to say at the same time, that upon these principles it can be proved, to the highest degree of probability. If by spiritual substance your lordship means a thinking substance, I must dissent from your lordship, and say, that we can have a certainty, upon my principles, that there is a spiritual substance in us. In short, my lord, upon my principles, i. e. from the idea of thinking, we can have a certainty that there] is a thinking substance in us; from hence we have a certainty that there is an eternal thinking substance. This thinking sub-. stance, which has been from eternity, I have proved to be immaterial*. This eternal, immaterial, thinking substance, has put into us a thinking substance, which, whether it be a material or immaterial substance, cannot be infallibly demonstrated from our ideas; though from them it may be proved, that it is to the highest degree probable that it is immaterial. This, in short, my lord, is what I have to say on this point; which may, in good measure, serve for an answer to your lordship's next leaf or two; which I shall set down, and then take notice of some few particulars which I wonder to find your lordship accuse me of. Your lordship says: "But we are told, that from the operations of our minds, we are able to frame a complex idea of a spirit t. How can that be, when we cannot from those ideas be assured, but that those operations may come from a material substance? If we frame an idea on such grounds, it is at most but a possible idea; for it may be otherwise, and we can have no assurance from our ideas, that it is not: so that the most men may come to in this way of ideas is, that it is possible it may be so, and it is possible it may not: but that it is impossible for us, from our ideas, to determine either way. And is not this an admirable way to bring us to a certainty of reason?" "I am very glad to find the idea of a spiritual sub stance made as consistent and intelligible, as that of a corporeal:-for as the one consists of a cohesion of solid parts, and the power of communicating motion by impulse, so the other consists in a power of thinking, and willing, and moving the body *; and that the cohesion of solid parts is as hard to be conceived as thinking: and we are as much in the dark about the power of communicating motion by impulse, as in the power of exciting motion by thought. We have by daily experience clear evidence of motion produced, both by impulse and by thought: but the manner how, hardly comes within our comprehension; we are equally at a loss in both. "From whence it follows, that we may be certain of a being of a spiritual substance, although we have no clear and distinct idea of it, nor are able to comprehend the manner of its operations t; and therefore it is a vain thing in any to pretend that all our reason and certainty is founded on clear and distinct ideas; and that they have reason to reject any doctrine which relates to spiritual substances, because they cannot comprehend the manner of it. For the same thing is confessed by the most inquisitive men, about the manner of operation, both in material and immaterial substances. It is affirmed,—that the very notion of body implies something very hard, if not impossible, to be explained or understood by us; and that the natural consequence of it, viz. divisibility, involves us in difficulties impossible to be explicated, or made consistent; that we have but some few superficial ideas of things; that we are destitute of faculties to attain to the true nature of them §; and that when we do that, we fall presently into darkness and obscurity, and can discover nothing further but our own blindness and ignorance." "These are very fair and ingenuous confessions of the shortness of human understanding, with respect to the nature and manner of such things which we are most certain of the being of, by constant and undoubted experience. I appeal now to the reason of mankind, whether it can be any reasonable foundation for re B. ii. c. 23. § 27. ↑ Ibid. § 28. Ibid. § 31. § Ibid. § 32. jecting a doctrine proposed to us as of divine revelation, because we cannot comprehend the manner of it; especially when it relates to the divine essence. For as the same author observes*,-our idea of God is framed from the complex ideas of those perfections we find in ourselves, but enlarging them so, as to make them suitable to an infinite Being; as knowledge, power, duration, &c. And the degrees or extent of these which we ascribe to the sovereign Being, are all boundless and infinitet. For it is infinity, which joined to our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, &c. makes that complex idea, whereby we represent to ourselves, the best we can, the Supreme Being." "Now, when our knowledge of gross material substances is so dark; when the notion of spiritual substances is above all ideas of sensation; when the higher any substance is, the more remote from our knowledge; but especially when the very idea of a Supreme Being implies its being infinite and incomprehensible; I know not whether it argues more stupidity or arrogance to expose a doctrine relating to the divine essence, because they cannot comprehend the manner of it: but of this more afterwards. I am yet upon the certainty of our reason, from clear and distinct ideas: and if we can attain to certainty without them, and where it is confessed we cannot have them, as about substance; then these cannot be the sole matter and foundation of our reasoning, which is peremptorily asserted by this late author." Here, after having argued, that notwithstanding what I say about our idea of a spirit, it is impossible, from our ideas, to determine whether that spirit in us be a material substance or no, your lordship concludes the paragraph thus: "and is not this an admirable way to bring us to a certainty of reason?" I answer; I think it is a way to bring us to a certainty in these things which I have offered as certain, but I never thought it a way to certainty, where we never can reach certainty; nor shall I think the worse of it, if your lordship should instance in an hundred + Ibid. § 36. * Book ii. c. 23. § 33, 34, 35. |