dependence of one thing upon another, deduce it from sensible experiments-a thing that, it may be, was scarce ever done by the wisest philosophers; but is rather believed with a kind of repugnancy to sense, which shews all things to be mortal, and which would have been too apt to have deluded the ruder sort of men, did not a more powerful impression upon their souls forcibly urge them to believe their own immortality. Though, indeed, if the common notions of men were well examined, perhaps some common notion adherent to this of the immortality may be as generally received, which yet in itself is false; and that, by reason of a common prejudice by which the earthly and sensual part of man will equally influence all men, until they come to be well acquainted with their own souls; as, namely, a notion of the soul's materiality, and, it may be, its traduction too, which seems to be as generally received by the vulgar sort as the former. But the reason of that is evident; for the souls of men exercising themselves first of all κινήσει προβατικῇ, as the Greek philosopher expresseth it-merely by a 'progressive kind of motion'-spending themselves about bodily and material acts, and conversing only with sensible things; they are apt to acquire such deep stamps of material phantasms to themselves, that they cannot imagine their own being any other than material and divisible, though of a fine ethereal nature: which kind of conceit, though it may be inconsistent with an immortal and incorruptible nature, yet hath had too much prevalency in philosophers themselves, their minds not being sufficiently abstracted while they have contemplated the highest Being of all. And some think Aristotle himself cannot be excused on this point, who seems to have thought God himself to be nothing else but μéya (wov, as he styles him. But such common notions as these are, arising from the deceptions and hallucinations of sense, ought not to prejudice those which not

F

sense, but some higher power, begets in all men. And so we have done with that.

2 The second thing I should premise, should be in place of a Postulatum to our following demonstrations, or rather a caution about them, which is; that, to a right conceiving of the force of any such arguments as may prove the soul's immortality, there must be an antecedent converse with our own souls. It is no hard matter to convince any one, by clear and evident principles, fetched from his own sense of himself, who hath ever well meditated on the powers and operations of his own soul, that it is immaterial and immortal.

But those very arguments that to such will be demonstrative, to others will lose something of the strength of probability: for, indeed, it is not possible for us well to know what our souls are, but by their κινήσεις κυκλικαὶ their circular and reflex motions'-and converse with themselves, which only can steal from them their own secrets. All those discourses which have been written of the soul's heraldry, will not blazon it so well to us as itself will do. When we turn our own eyes in upon it, it will soon tell us its own royal pedigree and noble extraction, by those sacred hieroglyphics which it bears upon itself. We shall endeavour to interpret and unfold some of them in our following discourse.

3 There is one thing more to be considered, which may serve as a common basis or principle to our following arguments, and it this hypothesis; that no substantial and indivisible thing ever perisheth. And this Epicurus and all of his sect must needs grant, as indeed they do, and much more than it is lawful to plead for; and therefore they make this one of the first principles of their atheistical philosophy:

gigni

De nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti'.

1 Pers. III. 83.

'You are not of

But we shall here be content with that sober thesis of Plato in his Timæus, who attributes the perpetuation of all substances to the benignity and liberality of the Creator, whom he therefore brings in thus speaking to the angels-those véo Ocoì, as he calls them'. yourselves immortal, nor indissoluble; but would relapse and slide back from that being which I have given you, should I withdraw the influence of my own power from you: but yet you yet you shall hold your immortality by a patent of mere grace from myself.' But to return: Plato held that the whole world, howsoever it might meet with many periodical mutations, should remain eternally; which I think our Christian divinity doth no where deny: and so Plotinus frames this general axiom, 'that no substance shall ever perish". And, indeed, if we collate all our own observations and experience, with such as the history of former times hath delivered to us, we shall not find that ever any substance was quite lost; but though this Proteus-like matter may perpetually change its shape, yet it will constantly appear under one form or another, what art soever we use to destroy it: as it seems to have been set forth in that old gryphe, or riddle, of the Peripatetic school, Elia Lelia Crispis, nec mas, nec fœmina, nec androgyna, nec casta, nec meretrix, nec pudica; sed omnia,

1 τοῖς νέοις παρέδωκε θεοῖς σώματα πλάττειν θνητά, κ.τ.λ. Plat. Tim. 42 D. The following is the remarkable passage of Plato, a free translation of part of which is given above.

Θεοὶ θεῶν, ὧν ἐγὼ δημιουργὸς πατήρ τε ἔργων, ἃ δι ̓ ἐμοῦ γενόμενα ἄλυτα ἐμοῦ γε ἐθέλοντος. τὸ μὲν οὖν δὴ δεθὲν πᾶν λυτόν, τό γε μὴν καλῶς ἁρμοσθὲν καὶ ἔχον εὖ λύειν ἐθέλειν κακοῦ. δι' ἃ καὶ ἐπείπερ γεγένησθε, ἀθάνατοι μὲν οὐκ ἐστὲ οὐδ ̓ ἄλυτοι τὸ πάμε παν, οὗ τι μὲν δὴ λυθήσεσθέ γε οὐδὲ τεύξε σθε θανάτου μοίρας, τῆς ἐμῆς βουλήσεως μείζονος ἔτι δεσμοῦ καὶ κυριωτέρου λαχόντες ἐκείνων, οἷς ὅτ' ἐγίγνεσθε ξυνεδεῖσθε. Plato, Tim. 41 A.

The words of Plato did not escape the notice of Plotinus. ̓Αλλὰ πῶς θνητὴν φύσιν ; τὸ μὲν γὰρ τόνδε τὸν τόπον, ἔστω δεικνύειν τὸ πᾶν ἢ τὸ, Αλλ' ἐπείπερ ἐγένεσθε, ἀθάνατοι μὲν οὐκ ἔστε, οὔ τι γε μὴν λυθήσεσθε δι' ἐμέ. Thus rendered in the Translation of Ficinus: 'Sed quomodo naturam dicit mortalem? Quod enim dixit circa hunc locum mala revolvi, designare concedatur universum: num forte per illud confirmatur, quod in Timæo inquit: sed quoniam estis geniti, immortales quidem non estis; neque tamen unquam solvemini, mea virtute servati.'-Enn. 1. 8. 7. 3 οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος ἀπολεῖται. Enn. IV. 7. 14.

&c. as Fortunius Licetus hath expounded it'. Therefore, it was never doubted whether ever any piece of substance was lost, till of later times some hot-brained Peripatetics, who could not bring their fiery and subtile fancies to any cool judgment, began rashly to determine that all material forms (as they are pleased to call them) were lost. For, having once jumbled and crowded in a new kind of being, never anciently heard of, between the parts of a contradiction, that is, matter and spirit, which they call material forms, because they could not well tell whence these new upstarts should arise, nor how to dispose of them when matter began to shift herself into some new garb, they condemned them to utter destruction; and yet, lest they should seem too rudely to control all sense and reason, they found out this common 'tale which signifieth nothing,' that these substantial forms were educed ex potentia materiæ, whenever matter began to appear in any new disguise, and afterwards again returned in gremium materiæ; and so they thought them not quite lost. But this curiosity consisting only of words fortuitously packed up together, being too subtile for any sober judgment to lay hold upon, and which they themselves could never yet tell how to define, we shall as carelessly lay it aside, as they boldly obtrude it upon us, and take the common distinction of all substantial being for granted, viz. That it is either body, and so divisible, and of three dimensions; or else it is something which is not properly a body or matter, and so hath no such dimensions as that the parts thereof

1 The following is a copy of the titlepage of the work here referred to. 'Allegoria Peripatetica de Generatione, Amicitia, et Privatione in Aristotelicum Ænigma Elia Lelia Crispis. Fortunius Licetus Genuensis, in Patavino Lyceo Physiologus ordinarius Amplissimo Senatori Veneto Paulo Mauroceno, D.D.D.' (Patavii, 1630). The work consists of two parts: in the former, the opinions of others with re

gard to the inscription are refuted; in the latter, Fortunius Licetus gives his own interpretation. The words of the text will be found in the introductory pages to Part I. The absurdity of stating (as is done in the general preface), that the inscription may probably be a fragment of a lost work of Aristotle, is in complete accordance with the senseless matter of which the volume is made up.

should be crowding for place, and justling one with another, not being all able to lodge together, or run one into another: and this is nothing else but what is commonly called spirit. Though yet we will not be too critical in depriving every thing which is not grossly corporeal of all kind of extension.

CHAPTER III.

The first argument for the immortality of the soul.

That the soul of man

is not corporeal. The gross absurdities upon the supposition that the soul is a complex of fluid atoms, or that it is made up by a fortuitous concourse of atoms: which is the notion of Epicurus concerning body. The principles and dogmas of the Epicurean philosophy in opposition to the immaterial and incorporeal nature of the soul, asserted by Lucretius; but discovered to be false and insufficient. That motion cannot arise from body or matter. Nor can the power of sensation arise from matter: much less can reason. That all human knowledge hath not its rise from sense. The proper function of sense, ant that it is never deceived. An addition of three considerations for the enforcing of this first argument, and further clearing the immateriality of the soul. That there is in man a faculty which, 1st, controls sense: and 2ndly collects and unites all the perceptions of our several senses. 3rdly, That memory and prevision are not explicable upon the supposition of matter and motion.

WE shall therefore now endeavour to prove, that the

soul of man is something really distinct from his body, of an indivisible nature, and so cannot be divided into such parts as should flit one from another; and, consequently, that it is apt of its own nature to remain to eternity, and so will do, except the decrees of heaven should abandon it from being.

And, first, we shall prove it ab absurdo, and here do as the mathematicians use to do in such kind of demonstrations: we will suppose that, if the reasonable soul be