two sorts of Sensation We have shewn that there is nothing precisely but the same Soul which reasons and speculates the most abstracted Objects and which at the same time is sensible of Heat and Cold Bitter and Sweet We have shewn that nothing is more contradictory and chimerical than to maintain That the Perception of Heat and Cold of Sweet and Bitter of White and Black and generally of every thing which Men call Sensible Qualities is a corporeal Act in the Soul and that the Act of Speculating Intelligible Objects and Universal Notions is a Spiritual Act there being nothing more monstrous than to conceive in a Subject undoubtedly Spiritual this Medley of Spiritual and Corporeal Acts. We have shewn that all Knowledge doth belong to the Soul and that the Body is incapable of having any Certainty or any Idea either of it self or of that which is done in it These are no more Philosophers which we have to combate withal upon this Subject these are none but Atheists and Libertines Fools and Brute Beasts who cannot maintain the Combate because as hath been said they are disarm'd by themselves and forc'd to confess that nothing is more impossible than to conceive That a Body Thinks Reasons Deliberates and Reflects There cannot be in effect a Paradox more enormous there cannot be a greater Contradiction there cannot be a Thought more monstrous than to say That a Body Knows It is as if one should say that a Thought is Green or Yellow that the Act of Reasoning is Cold or Hot that an Abstraction of Metaphysical Speculation is Square or Eight-corner'd as if one should make Birds to fly in the Sea and Elephants in the Air as if one should place Ice in the Fire and the Sweetness of Sugar or Honey in Wormwood or Gall. This is to unnature things this is to mingle subvert and confound every thing this is to bring Heaven and Earth together this is to embroil all the Universe this is to destroy all neat Ideas this is to take away and abolish the Distinction of Things this is to re-plunge the World into its first Chaos and into the first Darkness which cover'd it before the Light which enlightens it had made visible the Distinction and Diversity of its Parts We need not wonder that Libertines are willing to confound the Ideas of Body and Spirit It is the Genius of that frenetick Fury of Libertinism and Debauchery which carries them on not to be able to suffer the Light which manifests these Disorders They represent to us in History furious Men beginning by extinguishing Flambeaus by shunning the Day and the Light as it were to conceal the horror of their Rage and Fury under the horror of Night and Darkness but these by their good will would destroy the Light of Distinction of a Part that knows and a Part that do's not know Thanks to the most constant and to the most indubitable of all Experiences wee feel it we touch it we see it they cannot make us doubt but that there is in Us a thing that Knows and a thing that do's not Know and since We have seen that That which Knows is of a Spiritual Nature it is impossible for Us to doubt but that we have in us a Part that is Spiritual This Spiritual Part is our Soul for it is this Knowing Part that we call the Soul We do not only perceive that it is distinct from the Body but we perceive that it hath an Infinite Nobleness above the Body It hath not any Bulk nor any Extension it is a Being wholly Indivisible and yet in the mean time it contains and embraces the whole Universe It is a Nature Singular Determin'd and Individual and it is all the Natures Heaven Earth the Sea Trees Birds all that is seen in the World by a lively Expression which it makes of them in it self or which it receives Intelligendo fit Omnia All things are made by Understanding This is very much that this Knowing Part which we experience in Us hath by this Perfection of its Knowing Faculty that Species of Immensity by which we see it lodge as it were in its Bosom the Heavens the Earth and the Seas and to contain all the Universe and that admirable Power and Efficacy of transforming it self into all sorts of Natures and of becoming every thing it knows and conceives by the lively and animated Expression which it makes thereof in it self But its Grandeur is not shut up in that alone its Nobility appears yet more in its immense and infinite Capacity of Reasoning and extends its Knowledge and its Light upon all sorts of Objects and all sorts of Truths For whether it be that it is its essential Property as a Spiritual and Reasonable Nature and the Act of Reason to see into things whereby is made known to it all the Relations which they have and which Truth doth or whether it is God who over and above the Idea which He gives of things causes it moreover to see the Relation of them in the Eternal Idea which he hath of them I will not go about to decide here God sees nothing but what the Soul of Man may see if it pleases him to enlighten it and when he hath once enlightned it it can go of it self by its Faculty of Reasoning to a thousand and a thousand new Truths which it discovers by its proper Speculation It Contemplates the Eternal Order and reads in that Uncreated Light all the Rules of Duties It sees all the Proportions and Disproportions of things it hath no limits to its Knowledge It can know God and can plunge it self into the Abyss of his Perfections and his Mysteries it can even enjoy all his Delights and with him partake of his Felicity We find that it is sensible of a thousand Pleasures even in this Estate of Trial and Combat where it is kept in this Valley of Tears and this Earthly Inheritance of Thorns It is susceptible of a thousand sorts of agreeable Sentiments even in its present Estate by the which it is penetrated and fill'd with true and ineffable Felicity We must not believe that this Sensibility or this Capacity of feeling Pleasure is limited to those Pleasures only which we experience at present As its Knowledge by Idea's and by Lights is not bounded and limited to the Idea's which it hath at present since it is certain that we may be enlightned with a thousand sorts of new Idea's which now we have not so its Knowledge or the Faculty of Knowing by Perception is in the same manner infinite and without bounds This which at present gives us by the occasion of the Body a thousand several agreeable Sentiments with which we feel our selves so sweetly penetrated will be able always to give us new ones and greater during all Eternity These at present are Tastes of Felicity which we are made to feel and taste which ought to make us comprehend by these Foretastes what kind of
Corporeal Image with a certain Bulk a certain Figure and a certain Colour and this is called To Imagine And we conceive things Spiritual and Intelligible without any Corporeal Form and this is called To know by pure Notion and by pure Intellection As we conceive for Example the Thought or the Act of Knowing or Thinking God Angels Universal Notions and all the Idea's of Duties These two manners of Conceiving are incontestable by the Experience of all Men and that which occasions the difficulty which a Man commonly hath of knowing his Soul is because it cannot be known but by Intellection and because even then when a Man will give himself the time and take the pains to re-enter into himself and to suspend the Pleasure of abandoning the Soul to Sense and Imagination instead of supporting as hath been said already the Intellect he immediately puts himself into a desire of conceiving the Soul which is an Object altogether Spiritual under a Corporeal Image and Form and that by Imagination The Question is to conceive it by Inteâ—ection and he will at any rate Imagine it it is a Spirit and he will make it a Body St. Augustin makes this Confession of himself That he was a long time abandon'd to this Empire of Imagination which fill'd him full of darkness he could not conceive his Soul but as a Wind an Air and a subtle Fire But when he had made a more serious Reflection upon himself he said that he saw how grosly he deceiv'd himself in conceiving that his Soul was a Wind an Air and a Fire since it was evident that his Soul was none of all that because it was impossible but that that which conconceived the Air the Wind the Fire and all things should be something more than those things which it conceived and that it was nothing of all that but that it was that which conceived all those things That every one feels and perceives his Soul and that altho' he be ignorant it is only because he knows not that he knows it St. Augustin made himself an Idea and a Notion of his Soul by that Reflection and thenceforwards he cut off and suspended all the Acts and all the Exercises of the Imagination when he would Reason concerning God concerning Angels and concerning Humanc Souls See here we have found a good Guide and a good Master let us follow his Principles and his Examples He attained to have the most perfect Idea of the Soul that one can possibly have of it and we shall attain it likewise with him he hath learnt us to know our Soul with the greatest ease in the World Let us reflect like him upon our selves and upon our proper Faculty of Imagining of Seeing of Perceiving and when we shall have well Reflected we shall find that we have not need of making any Effort for to know our Souls that we have nothing to do but to cut off all the Corporeal Images which can present themselves to us and to shut up our selves into that which we perceive of our selves which is that we have in us something that Perceives that Knows that Reasons that Loves that Hates c. And when we have well setled and fixed our Thoughts thereon we shall say that we have found our Soul that we hold it that we touch it that we see it For effectively there is That which is our Soul there is no Man who may not know it and who cannot frame a Notion and an Idea of it because there is no Man who doth not perceive it and who by the reflection upon his own Sentiment cannot frame a clear Idea and Notion of it but we do not at all perceive that we know it because we Imagine which is another thing we go to see for the Idea or Notion of it out of our selves we run over all Nature and a thousand Countreys that lie perdue out of Nature a thousand chimerical Imaginations to find an Idea and a Notion of the Soul which can content the Imagination we seek afar off for that which is at hand we search after that which we Have and we seek out of our selves for that which we have in the first and most interior Sentiment which we have of our selves we are like him who having heard speak of the Sun and not at all knowing that it was That so beautiful and so luminous Body which lightens and which warms all the visible World that bore that Name enquir'd of every body for the Sun and search'd for it every where We know necessarily what the Soul is we perceive it but till we have reflected on it we do not know that we know it If we had nothing to do but to reflect we should then have this clear and distinct Idea of our Soul That our Soul is that which we Experience makes us Perceive makes us See makes us to Love and to Hate which makes us have Pleasure and Pain and all the Certitude which we have of our selves and of the things which are out of us From whence we form this Notion That our Soul is a Knowing Nature and Substance and indubitably distinct from the Body Mistress of its Thoughts and Desires and sensible of Order and Duty by which we are capable and susceptible of Idea's and Sentiments without bounds and without end according as the Supreme Nature which rules over us with so sensible and so evident an Empire will please to give us them and tho' there were in our Nature but this single Character of our Dependence of which all our Sentiments and all our Knowledges carry the Idea to our Understanding it would be impossible to be ignorant and not to acknowledge that we are under the Hand of a Master who can make us Sovereignly happy or unhappy when he pleaseth CHAP. XVII Some Essential Reflections to Establish the Order of the Preference of the Soul above that of the Body THIS is the just Idea and Notion of our Soul in the which we must cull out and separate Eight or Nine Things which mark it out by August and altogether Illustrious Characters and which are so many Principles and Lights of Morality by the which we ought to Establish the Order of our Duties in relation to our Souls and our Bodies which is the First Part of this Idea and of this Moral Essay which we have propos'd to give you That all the good and ill Fortune are in our Souls We must first of all observe in that Notion which we have made of our Soul by our reflection upon our Sentiment and upon the inward and indubitable Experience that we have of our selves That the Soul is in Us Our Principal Part the Ground both of our Being and to apprehend it aright all our Being since the Ground of our Being ought not to be apprehended only in relation to the most noble Part but to That which causes in Us the good or ill Fortune For to Be is not estimable but in relation to
the Spirit that is to say the Spiritual Nature pierces penetrates and enlightens all things If we consider the advantage which Reason and the proper Intelligence of our Spiritual Nature gives us of being able surely to Enlarge our Knowledges by the infallible Consequences which we draw from things we have already known for those which we do not know as yet We shall find that there is nothing more Natural and less Rash than to endeavour to decide by the clear Idea which we have of our Soul and by the Notion no less clear which we have of the Supream Nature which alone is able to be the Cause of the divers Conditions of the Soul of the Estate wherein it ought to place our Souls after they shall have finished their Trial in the Body and that this Eternal Justice shall have fixed upon them his Anger or his Love according as they shall have render'd themselves worthy by their Obedience and Fidelity or by the obstinacy of their Disorder and Revolt This double Notion which we have so clear and so distinct of God and of our Spiritual Nature joyned to that which we have of our present State as of a State where our Obedience and Fidelity are put to a Trial and where the Eternal Justice hath his Eyes open to see our Combat with the Flesh and with our Senses We form a sure Light by which we are able to enter march safely into that obscurity and those darknesses And since we have a Taper in our hands lighted by those Idea's so clear and so certain of the Knowledges which we have already acquired why then should we not carry it into that dark and unknown Country which is of so great Importance to us to discover and know Since we have Wind and Sails enough to carry us over to this New World why then should not we go thither to make a Map of it Since our Reason may be illuminated above the Darkness of the Night of our Senses and of our Imagination why should not we illuminate the Blind who being once Enlightned will no more resist the Light of Divine and Heavenly Revelation which they often esteem when they are not Enlightned by Reason but as a Fable and a Fiction Then let us not fear to attempt this Discovery and Explain how our Souls are to be out of the Body since we are able to speak of it with some certainty The certainty of a New Estate of a New and Immortal Life for our Souls after this Present Life We are able to speak most certain and make as St. John did a Description and a Topography of this World to come and of this Heavenly Jerusalem VVe do not only know by the evident Conviction of the Spiritual Nature of our Souls That they are not at all destroyed and annihilated by Death which is not an advantage to the Spiritual Nature because there is nothing even in the most Corporeal Nature which is most Frail most Perishable and most subject to Corruption and the most liable to Death that Perishes entirely But we know with the same Certainty That the Soul subsists with all its Foundation of Life which we see it hath which is the advantage and essential Distinction of the Spiritual Nature For there is this Difference between a Spiritual or Knowing Nature and a Nature Corporeal That the Corporeal Nature may be deprived of Life but not of its Being for its Life is distinct from its Being in the Body for the Life of the Body is but a Motion which it hath there by its Structure its Organization and its inward and natural Composition which it may lose and doth every day lose without losing the Foundation of its Being And in preserving all the Basis of its material Substance which always remains and subsists notwithstanding any Change which may happen to it in its Structure and its outward and sensible Form But in Knowing or Spiritual Nature the Life and Being are but one and the same thing Since Knowledge and Sensibility or the Acts of the Appetitive Faculty which are the Basis and the Foundation of their Being are also essentially the Foundation of their Life For in Spiritual Nature to Live is not to Eat Walk or to be Moved but to Know to Perceive to Will to have Joy and Sadness Pain and Pleasure Those of the Heathen Philosophers who had some Glimmering of a true Idea of the Spiritual Nature but not under the Name of Spiritual Nature but only of a Knowing Nature did so well perceive That the Knowing Nature was Essentially Living that we see they all of them Established thereupon the Certainty of the Immortality of Mans Soul because indeed say they This Matter whereof the Soul of Man is formed is a Matter essentially Knowing and by consequence Living if it is Air or Fire it is not only an Air and a Fire that is most subtil but an Air and a Fire of a singular Nature an Air and a Fire essentially Knowing and by consequence Living Thus though the Souls of Men should be this Air and this material Fire say they as some do imagine yet for all that they would not cease to be Immortal because they would be always Essentially Living We see this System in all the Books of the Ancient Philosophers and we see at the same time That this Notion of the Soul as a Nature essentially Knowing whereof we have a certainty by a Conviction so lively and so full of Sentiments convinced all these Ancient Sages not only That Death doth not touch the Life of our Souls not only that it doth not destroy them But on the contrary That Death makes the Life of them perfect because it breaks their Prison and takes away from their Thoughts and their Views the Wall which stops them and the Vail which blinds them And their Conviction was so great thereupon that they did not speak with less Certainty and Pleasure of this New and Immortal Life of our Souls after Death than we speak to one another of some Neighbouring Provinces or of some New Discoveries They did no more doubt of this New Life than we do of Italy or of Spain For to speak of Canada and the American Isles would be too little to express the Certainty They did not only speak of it with Assurance and without incertainty They spoke of it with Incredible Joys and Transports They longed to arrive at the happy end of their Voyage They conceived ardent desires for Death They did more than all this they advanced it further And we know That in a Famous Common Wealth of Grece they were obliged to Prohibit and Suppress a Book that had been Writ upon the Immortality of the Soul because it did so livelily Impress upon their Spirits the Conviction of their Immortality that they were fearful lest it should Depopulate the Earth and cause the Race of Mankind to be destroyed because they saw it had carried a great many of them not only