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fubfiftens, p. 160. He acknowledges, however, with all the Ariftotelians, that the foul is the form of the body, p. 161. Since that by means of which any thing acts, is the form of that to which the operation is attributed, p. 163. The whole foul, he fays, is in every part of the body, according to the whole of its perfection and effence, but not according to the whole of its power, p. 168. There is but one foul, he fays, to one man, discharging the functions of the intellectual, vegetative, and fenfitive part, p. 165. In order to explain the mutual action of the foul and body, he says, p. 160, that the contactus virtutis is oppofite to the contactus qualitatis, and that body may be touched by what is incorporeal, fo that the foul may move the body.

In Pernumia, whofe treatife of Natural Philofophy was printed in 1570, the foul is faid, fol. 85, to be the first act, primus actus, of the body, and that it is fo united to the body, that, with refpect to its quantity, it is tota in toto, et pars in parte; but with respect to its effence, and all its faculties, it is tota in toio, et tota in qualibet parte. In the fame treatise, the natural and vital beat (which he fays is compofed of the fubftance of the heart, the most refined (depuratis) vapours of the blood, and air attracted by it) is faid, fol. 91, to be a middle fubftance between the body and the foul.

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PART IV.

The State of Opinions from the Time of Def cartes to the present.

THUS flood the orthodox faith concerning the foul till the time of Descartes, who introduced quite a new mode of confidering the fubject, beginning upon new principles; which was by doubting of every thing, and then admitting nothing but what his own consciousness abfolutely obliged him to admit. And yet his writings on this fubject have been the means of introducing more confufion into it than was ever known before.

The Cartefians confidered the Ariftotelian doctrine of the foul being the fubftantial form of the body, as inconfiftent with its immateriality, and confequently deftructive of the doctrine of its immortality. Hiftorical View, P. 17. But, in confequence of feparating from the idea of the foul every thing that he was not obliged to admit, Defcartes defined the effence of the foul to confift in thinking, the evident confequence of which is, that the foul is, in fact, nothing but a property, and no fubftance at all; and, therefore, notwithstanding his boafting of improving the doctrine of immateriality, he has been confidered by fome only as a more acute materialist.

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It is plain, however, that this was not the case, and his meaning must have been, that there was a fubftance of the foul, and that the property of this fubftance was to think without intermiffion, which he maintained. He is, therefore, confidered by others, and especially Mr. Bayle, as having firft established the true doctrine of an immaterial fubftance, intirely without extenfion, or relation to place. And yet I do not fee that his idea of the foul could be wholly abftracted from matter, when he supposed that the feat of it was the pineal gland. I therefore think that the proper immaterial system is of ftill later date, but who was the author of it may not be easily discovered. Indeed, nothing was neceffary to make the doctrine of the schoolmen a complete fyftem of immaterialism, but the omiffion of a few positions which were inconfiftent with it. But in the fame proportion in which we cut off from spirit every property that it was supposed to have in common with matter, we bring it to a ftate in which it is naturally impoffible to act upon matter, or to be acted upon by it.

Malebranche adopted the fyftem of Descartes, maintaining that the effence of matter confifts in extenfion, and that of the foul in thinking. He therefore faid that the foul thinks always, and most of all when it has no consciousness of its thoughts. He is also faid to have been the first who brought into vogue the doctrine of animal fpirits.

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The fyftem of Defcartes has been generally adopted, but with fome improvements, by more modern metaphyficians. I do not, however, find the ftrict immaterial fyftem in any writer carlier than our Sir Kenelm Digby, who in his treatise Of the Soul, p. 85, confiders it as "the great property of the foul, "that it is able to move, and to work, with"out being moved or touched; that it is in no place, and yet not abfent from any "place; that it is also not in time, and not fubject to it, for though it does confist with "time, and is while time is, it is not in "time."

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To this doctrine Alexander Rofs, in his Philofophical Touchstone, p. 80, very naturally and fenfibly replies, "If the foul be no where, "it is nothing, and if every where, it is "God, whofe property indeed it is to be every where, by his effence, power, and "providence."

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The good fenfe of Mr. Locke was evidently ftaggered at the extravagant pofitions of the ftrict immaterialists, though he had not courage, or confiftency, to reject the doctrine altogether. In oppofition to them, he maintains largely (Ejay, vol. i. p. 259) that fpirits are in place, and capable of motion. He likewife maintained much at large the poffibility of thinking being fuperadded to matter*, and

So confiderable a writer as Mr. Locke, having maintained the poffible materiality of the foul, I can

not

and was inclined to be of opinion, that the fouls of men are only in part immaterial. "It

not fatisfy myself without giving my reader, in this note, an idea of his manner of confidering the fubject, by bringing together his moft ftriking arguments :

"We have ideas of matter and thinking, but poffibly "fhall never be able to know whether any mere material "being thinks or no; it being impoffible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to fome "fyftems of matter, fitly difpofed, a power to perceive and think; or else joined and fixed to matter, fo difpofed, <6 a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our com"prehenfion, to conceive that God can, if he pleases, "fuperadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he "fhould fuperadd to it another fubftance with the faculty

of thinking; fince we know not wherein thinking confifts, nor to what fort of fubftance the Almighty has "been pleafed to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator." Essay, vol. ii. p. 167.

This pofition he defends and illuftrates very largely, in his letter to the bishop of Worcester, fome of the moft remarkable paffages of which I shall subjoin.

"You cannot conceive how an extended folid fubftance fhould think, therefore God cannot make it think. "Can you conceive how your own foul, or any fubftance, "thinks? You find, indeed, that you do think, but I

want to be told how the action of thinking is performed. "This, I confefs, is beyond my conception." ibid, p. 146.

"You cannot conceive how a folid fubftance fhould <6 ever be able to move itself. And as little, fay I, are you able to conceive how a created unfolid fubftance "fhould move itself. But there may be something in an "immaterial fubftance that you do not know. I grant it, "" and in a material one too. For example, gravitation of "matter towards matter inevitably fhows that there is "fomething in matter that we do not understand, unless we can conceive felf-motion in matter, or an inexcitable and

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