all second causes. And Aristotle, who seems to have disputed so much against that auTOKIvnoia of souls, which his master before him had soberly maintained, does indeed but quarrel with that common sense and experience which we have of our souls; this auTOKIηoia of the soul being nothing else but that innate force and power which it hath within it, to stir up such thoughts and motions within itself as it finds itself most free to. And, therefore, when we reflect upon the productions of our own souls, we are soon able to find out the first efficient cause of them. And, though the subtilty of some wits may have made it difficult to find out whether the understanding or the will, or some other faculty of the soul, be the first mover, whence the motus primo primus (as they please to call it) proceeds; yet we know it is originally the soul itself, whose vital acts they all are: and, although it be not 'the first cause, as deriving all its virtue from itself,' as Simplicius distinguisheth, yet it is 'vitally co-working with the first causes of all1.' But, on the other side, when we come to examine those motions which arise from the body, this stream runs so far under ground, that we know not how to trace it to its head; but we are fain to analyze the whole artifice, looking from the spirits to the blood, from that to the heart, viewing all along the mechanical contrivance of veins and arteries: neither know we, after all our search, whether there be any perpetuum mobile in our own bodies, or whether all the motions thereof be only the redundancy of some external motions without us; nor how to find the first mover in

1 The De Anima of Aristotle opens thus: Τῶν καλῶν καὶ τιμίων τὴν εἴδησιν ὑπολαμβάνοντες, μᾶλλον δ ̓ ἑτέραν ἑτέρας ἢ κατ' ἀκρίβειαν ἢ τῶν βελτιόνων τε καὶ θαυμασιωτέρων εἶναι, δι' ἀμφότερα ταῦτα τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἱστορίαν εὐλόγως ἂν ἐν πρώTOLS TIDENμEV. On this, Simplicius re

marks that though Aristotle did not regard the soul as the first cause, yet he looked upon it as naturally bound up with the first causes of all: ...οὐ γὰρ ὡς αὐτόθεν πρώτην, ἀλλ ̓ ὡς ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις φυτ σικήν, διὰ τὴν οἷον συνεχῆ πρὸς αὐτὰ ὑπόβασιν.

nature; and though we could find out that, yet we know that there is a fatal determination which sits in all the wheels of mere corporeal motion; neither can they exercise any such noble freedom as we constantly find in the wills of men, which are as large and unbounded in all their elections, as reason itself can represent being itself to be.

Lucretius, that he might avoid the force of this argument, according to the genius of his sect, feigns this liberty to arise from a motion of declination, whereby his atoms, always moving downwards by their own weight towards the centre of the world, are carried a little obliquely, as if they tended toward some point different from it, which he calls clinamen principiorum'. Which riddle, though it be as good as any else which they, who held the materiality and mortality of souls in their own nature, can frame to solve this difficulty; yet is of such

private interpretation, that I believe no Edipus is able to expound it. But yet, by what we may guess at it, we shall easily find that this insolent conceit (and all else of this nature) destroys the freedom of will, more than any fate which the severest censors thereof, whom he sometimes taxeth, ever set over it. For how can anything be made subject to a free and impartial debate of reason, or fall under the level of free-will, if all things be the mere result either of a fortuitous or fatal motion of bodies, which can have no power or dominion over themselves? and why should he, or his great master, find so much fault with the superstition of the world, and condemn the opinions of other men, when they compare them with that transcendent sagacity they believe themselves to be the masters of, if all were nothing else but the mere issue of material motions; seeing that necessity which would arise from a different concourse and motion of several particles

1 Id facit exiguum clinamen principiorum.-Lucret. Rer. Nat. II. 292.

of matter, begetting that diversity of opinions and wills, would excuse them all from any blame?

Therefore, to conclude this argument, whatever essence finds this freedom within itself, whereby it is absolved from the rigid laws of matter, may know itself also to be immaterial; and, having dominion over its own actions, it will never desert itself: and, because it finds itself non vi aliena sed sua moveri, as Cicero argues', it feels itself able to preserve itself from the foreign force of matter, and can say of all those assaults which are at any time made against those sorry mud walls which in this life enclose it, ovdèv πpos éμé, as the Stoic did,-'all this is nothing to me,' who am yet free, and can command within, when this feeble carcase is able no longer to obey me; and when that is shattered and broken down, I can live any where else without it; for I was not that, but had only a command over it, while I dwelt in it.

But before we wholly desert this head, we may add some further strength to it, from the observation of that conflict which the reasons and understandings of men maintain against the sensitive appetite: and wheresoever the higher powers of reason in a man's soul prevail not, but are vanquished by the impetuousness of their sensual affections, through their own neglect of themselves; yet are they never so broken, but they may strengthen themselves again: and, where they subdue not men's inordinate passions and affections, yet even there will they condemn them for them. Whereas, were a man all of one piece,

1 Sentit igitur animus se moveri : quod quum sentit, illud una sentit, se vi sua, non aliena moveri : nec accidere posse, ut ipse unquam a se deseratur.Tusc. Disp. 1. 23.

Sic mihi persuasi, sic sentio, quum tanta celeritas animorum sit, tanta memoria præteritorum futurorumque prudentia, tot artes, tantæ scientiæ, tot inventa, non

posse eam naturam, quæ res eas contineat, esse mortalem; quumque semper agitetur animus, nec principium motus habeat, quia se ipse moveat, ne finem quidem habiturum esse motus, quia nunquam se ipse sit relicturus: et, quum simplex animi natura esset, neque haberet in se quidquam admixtum dispar sui atque dissimile, non posse eum dividi.-De Senect. c. XXI.

and made up of nothing else but matter, these corporeal motions could never check or control themselves; these material dimensions could not struggle with themselves, or, by their own strength, render themselves anything else than what they are. But this αυτεξούσιος ζωή, as the Greeks call it, this 'self-potent life' which is in the soul of man, acting upon itself, and drawing forth its own latent energy, finds itself able to tame the outward man, and bring under those rebellious motions that arise from the mere animal powers, and to tame and appease all those seditions and mutinies that it finds there. And if any can conceive all this to be nothing but a mere fighting of the mal-contented pieces of matter one against another, each striving for superiority and. pre-eminence; I should not think it worth the while to teach such a one any higher learning, as looking upon him to be endued with no higher a soul than that which moves in beasts or plants.

CHAPTER V.

The third argument for the immortality of the soul. That mathematical notions argue the soul to be of a truly spiritual and immaterial

nature.

WE shall now consider the soul awhile in a further

degree of abstraction, and look at it in those actions which depend not at all upon the body, wherein it doth τὴν ἑαυτοῦ συνουσίαν ἀσπάζεσθαι, as the Greeks speak, and converseth only with its own being'. Which we shall

1 μόνος γὰρ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν μερικῶν ζώων ὁ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχων ἑαυτῷ συγγίνεσθαι δύναται καὶ στέργειν ἑαυτόν, ὁ δὲ κακὸς πᾶς ὁρῶν εἰς τὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ αἶσχος ἀνίλλεται μὲν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ οὐσίαν, ἐπτύηται δὲ πρὸς τὰ ἐκτὸς καὶ διώκει τὰς πρὸς ἄλλους

ὁμιλίας, εἰς ἑαυτὸν ὁρᾶν οὐ δυνάμενος, ὁ δὲ σπουδαῖος ὁρῶν ἑαυτὸν καλὸν χαίρει καὶ εὐφραίνεται καὶ τίκτων ἐν ἑαυτῷ νοήματα καλὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ συνουσίαν ἀσπάζεται.— Procl. in Plat. Tim. 173 0.

first consider in those λόγοι μαθηματικοί, or mathematical notions,' which it contains in itself, and sends forth from within itself; which, as they are in themselves indivisible, and of such a perfect nature as cannot be received or immersed into matter; so they argue that subject in which they are seated to be of a truly spiritual and immaterial nature. Such as a pure point, linea aπλaτýs, latitude abstracted from all profundity, the perfection of figures, equality, proportion, symmetry and assymmetry of magnitudes, the rise and propagation of dimensions, infinite divisibility, and many such like things; which every ingenious son of that art cannot but acknowledge to be the true characters of some immaterial being, seeing they were never buried in matter, nor extracted out of it: and yet these are transcendently more certain and infallible principles of demonstration than any sensible thing can be. There is no geometrician but will acknowledge angular sections, or the cutting of an arch into any number of parts required, to be most exact without any diminution of the whole; but yet no mechanical art can possibly so perform either, but that the place of section will detract something from the whole. If any one should endeavour, by any mechanical subtilty, to double a cube, as the Delian oracle once commanded the Athenians, requiring them to duplicate the dimensions of Apollo's altar1; he would find it as impossible as they did, and be as much laughed at for his pains as some of their mechanics were. If therefore no matter be capable of any geometrical affections, and the apodictical precepts of geometry be altogether inimitable in the purest matter that fancy can imagine; then must they needs depend upon something infinitely more pure than matter, which hath all that

1 ἔτι δ' ὥσπερ Πλάτων ἔλεγε, χρησμοῦ δοθέντος, ὅπως τὸν ἐν Δήλῳ βωμὸν διπλασιάσωσιν, δ τῆς ἄκρας ἕξεως περὶ γεωμετ

τρίαν ἔργον ἐστίν, οὐ τοῦτο προστάττειν τὸν θεόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γεωμετρεῖν διακελεύεσθαι Toîs "EXλnow. --Plut. de EI Delphico, 386 E.