towards matter, and in the several proportions observable, inevitably shows, that there is something in matter that we do not understand, unless we can conceive self-motion in matter; or an inexplicable and inconceivable attraction in matter, at immense and almost incomprehensible distances: it must therefore be confessed, that there is something in solid, as well as unsolid substances, that we do not understand. But this we know, that they may each of them have their distinct beings, without any activity superadded to them, unless you will deny, that God can take from any being its power of acting, which it is probable will be thought too presumptuous for any one to do; and, I say, it is as hard to conceive self-motion in a created immaterial, as in a material being, consider it how you will: and therefore this is no reason to deny Omnipotency to be able to give a power of self-motion to a material substance, if he pleases, as well as to an immaterial; since neither of them can have it from themselves, nor can we conceive how it can be in either of them.

The same is visible in the other operation of thinking; both these substances may be made, and exist without thought; neither of them has, or can have the power of thinking from itself: God may give it to either of them, according to the good pleasure of his omnipotency; and in whichever of them it is, it is equally beyond our capacity to conceive how either of those substances thinks. But for that reason to deny that God, who had power enough to give them both a being out of nothing, can, by the same omnipotency, give them what other powers and perfections he pleases, has no better a foundation than to deny his power of creation, because we cannot conceive how it is performed: and there at last this way of reasoning must terminate.

That Omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the same time, I think, with due · reverence, we may say; but that a solid substance may not have qualities, perfections, and powers, which have no natural or visibly necessary connexion with solidity and extension, is too much for us (who are but of yesterday, and know nothing) to be positive in. If God

VOL. IV.

H H

cannot join things together by connexions inconceivable to us, we must deny even the consistency and being of matter itself; since every particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected by ways inconceivable to us. So that all the difficulties that are raised against the thinking of matter, from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so; nor prove any thing against his having actually endued some parcels of matter, so disposed as he thinks fit, with a faculty of thinking, till it can be shown that it contains a contradiction to suppose it.

Though to me sensation be comprehended under thinking in general, yet in the foregoing discourse I have spoken of sense in brutes, as distinct from thinking: because your lordship, as I remember, speaks of sense in brutes. But here I take liberty to observe, that if your lordship allows brutes to have sensation, it will follow, either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of perception and thinking; or that all animals have immaterial and consequently, according to your lordship, immortal souls, as well as men: and to say that fleas and mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men will possibly be looked on as going a great way to serve an hypothesis, and it would not very well agree with what your lordship says, Answ. 2. p. 64, to the words of Solomon, quoted out of Eccles. c. iii.

I have been pretty large in making this matter plain, that they who are so forward to bestow hard censures or names on the opinions of those who differ from them, may consider whether sometimes they are not more due to their own: and that they may be persuaded a little to temper that heat, which supposing the truth in their current opinions, gives them (as they think) a right to lay what imputations they please on those who would fairly examine the grounds they stand upon. For talking with a supposition and insinuations, that truth and knowledge, nay, and religion too, stands and falls with their systems, is at best but an imperious way of begging the question, and assuming to themselves, under the

pretence of zeal for the cause of God, a title to infallibility. It is very becoming that men's zeal for truth should go as far as their proofs, but not go for proofs themselves. He that attacks received opinions, with any thing but fair arguments, may, I own, be justly suspected not to mean well, nor to be led by the love of truth; but the same may be said of him too who so defends them. An error is not the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected: and if it were put to the vote any where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would have the majority; at least, whilst the authority of men, and not the examination of things, must be its measure. The imputation of scepticism, and those broad insinuations to render what I have writ suspected, so frequent as if that were the great business of all this pains you have been at about me, has made me say thus much, my lord, rather as my sense of the way to establish truth in its full force and beauty, than that I think the world will need to have any thing said to it, to make it distinguish between your lordship's and my design in writing; which therefore I securely leave to the judgment of the reader, and return to the argument in hand.

What I have above said I take to be a full answer to all that your lordship would infer from my idea of matter, of liberty, and of identity, and from the power of abstracting. You ask, "how can my way of liberty agree with the idea that bodies can operate only by motion and impulse?" Answ. By the omnipotency of God, who can make all things agree, that involve not a contradiction. It is true, I say, "that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else." And so I thought when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation. But I am since convinced by the judicious Mr. Newton's incomparable book, that it is too bold a presumption to limit God's power, in this point, by my narrow conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways inconceivable to me, is not only a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what can * Essay, b. ii. c. 8. § 11.

be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we know of matter, but also an unquestionable and every where visible instance, that he has done so. And therefore in the next edition of my book I shall take care to have that passage rectified.

As to self-consciousness, your lordship asks, “what is there like self-consciousness in matter?" Nothing at all in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, will never be proved by asking, "how is it possible to apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive?" The weakness of our apprehension I grant in the case: I confess as much as you please, that we cannot conceive how a solid, no nor how an unsolid created substance thinks; but this weakness of our apprehensions reaches not the power of God, whose weakness is stronger than any thing in man.

Your argument from abstraction we have in this question, "if it may be in the power of matter to think, how comes it to be so impossible for such organized bodies as the brutes have to enlarge their ideas by abstraction?" Answ. This seems to suppose, that I place thinking within the natural power of matter. If that be your meaning, my lord, I neither say, nor suppose, that all matter has naturally in it a faculty of thinking, but the direct contrary. But if you mean that certain parcels of matter, ordered by the divine Power, as seems fit to him, may be made capable of receiving from his omnipotency the faculty of thinking; that indeed I say, and that being granted, the answer to your question is easy, since if Omnipotency can give thought to any solid substance, it is not hard to conceive, that God may give that faculty in an higher or lower degree, as it pleases him, who knows what disposition of the subject is suited to such a particular way or degree of thinking.

Another argument to prove, that God cannot endue any parcel of matter with the faculty of thinking, is taken from those words of mine, where I show by what connexion of ideas we may come to know, that God is an immaterial substance. They are these: "the idea of an eternal, actual knowing Being, with the idea of im

materiality, by the intervention of the idea of matter, and of its actual division, divisibility, and want of perception," &c. From whence your lordship thus argues: "here the want of perception is owned to be so essential to matter, that God is therefore concluded to be immaterial." Answ. Perception and knowledge in that one eternal Being, where it has its source, it is visible, must be essentially inseparable from it; therefore the actual want of perception in so great part of the particular parcels of matter, is a demonstration, that the first Being, from whom perception and knowledge is inseparable, is not matter. How far this makes the want of perception an essential property of matter, I will not dispute; it suffices that it shows, that perception is not an essential property of matter; and therefore matter cannot be that eternal original Being, to which perception and knowledge is essential. Matter, I say, naturally is without perception; ergo, says your lordship, "want of perception is an essential property of matter, and God doth not change the essential properties of things, their nature remaining." From whence you infer, that God cannot bestow on any parcel of matter (the nature of matter remaining) a faculty of thinking. If the rules of logic, since my days, be not changed, I may safely deny this consequence. For an argument that runs thus," God does not, ergo, he cannot;" I was taught, when I came first to the university, would not hold. For I never said God did; but "that I see no contradiction in it, that he should, if he pleased, give to some systems of senseless matter a faculty of thinking*" and I know nobody, before Des Cartes, that ever pretended to show that there was any contradiction in it. So that, at worst, my not being able to see in matter any such incapacity as makes it impossible for Omnipotency to bestow on it a faculty of thinking, makes me opposite only to the Cartesians. For, as far as I have seen or heard, the fathers of the Christian church never pretended to demonstrate that matter was incapable to receive a power of sensation, perception, and thinking, from the hand of the omnipotent Creator.

*B. iv. c. 3. § 6.