Coextense to the whole Body of a Substance either Fiery or meerly resembling Fire of a consistence most thin and subtile not much unlike the flame of of pure spirit of Wine burning in a paper Lantern or other the like close place First I think it to be Corporeal Divisible and Coextense to the whole Body and that for two reasons among many others not the least considerable One is this that many and divers Animal actions are daily observed to be at one and the same time performed by divers Parts and Members of the Body for instance the Eye sees the Ear hears the Nostrils smell the Tongue tasteth and all exteriour Members exercise their Sense and Motion all at once For as much then as betwixt the Body and Soul of a Brute there is no Medium both being intimately connexed but the Members and Parts of the Body are Instruments fram'd for the use of the Soul what else can be imagined but that many and distinct portions of the Soul so extended do inform and actuate the distinct Organs and Members of the Body each in a peculiar manner respective to the peculiar Constitution Fabrique and Office thereof The Other this it is observed also that Vipers Eels Earthworms and most other Reptils being cut into many pieces all pieces for a good while after retain a manifest Motion and no obscure sense for being prick'd they contract and shrink up themselves as sensible of the Hurt and striving to avoid it And this probably from hence that these less perfect Animals having their liquors both Vital and Animal of a consistence viscous and not easily dissoluble or dissipable and having their Soul if not equally yet universally diffused and all its parts subsisting immediately in those liquors cannot suffer a division of their Body without division of their Soul also the parts whereof residing for some time after in the segments of the Body may perhaps for that time continue to actuate them to Motion and Sense It hath been more then once unhappily Experimented that the Head of a Viper hath bitten a Mans Finger and Poysoned him too above an hour after it had been cut off Not by involuntary convulsion of the Nerves and Muscles of the Vipers Jaws such as not rarely happen to Animals in the torments of Death for those probably could neither last so long nor so regularly open and shut the mouth and extend the two fang teeth by contraction of their erecting Muscles but certainly by an action voluntary regular and suggested by sense and perhaps revenge too Whence I am apt to suspect that not only part of the Vipers Soul but Anger and Revenge also survived in the divided head For it is well known the bite of a Viper is never Venomous but when he is enraged the Chrystalline liquor contained in the two little Glandules at the roots of his fang teeth being then by a copious afflux of Spirits from the Brain and other brisk motions thereupon impress'd in anger of all passions the most violent and impetuous so altered and exalted as to become highly active and venenate whereas at other times when a Viper is not offended and provok'd the same Liquor is found to be as harmless as the spittle of a Man in perfect health But whether from the dangerous effects of this biting the dire Symptoms that thereupon ensued it be inferrible or not that in the abscinded head of the beast there remained anything of Anger and Revenge in my poor judgment 't is very evident from the very act of biting there still remained somwhat of life sense and voluntary motion Which is sufficient to verify my present supposition that a Sensitive Soul is divisible and coextense to the whole body it animates Secondly I think the same Sensitive Soul to consist of Fire or some matter analogous to Fire and the Reasons inducing me to be of this opinion are many Some I have formerly alleadged where I discourse of the Flame of life perpetually arising from accension of the Sulphureous and inflammable parts of the blood while circulated through the heart and lungs which therefore I abstain from reciting in this place Others that have since occurr'd to my consideration I am obliged here to expose to yours That the Life or Soul of Brute Animals is seated principally in their Blood we are plainly taught even by the Oracle of truth itself the dictates of the Divine Wisdom that created them and that Blood and Fire subsist by the same principles viz. Aliment and Ventilation is evident from hence that a defect of either of these doth equally destroy both the one and the other Should you here exact from me some description of the Essence of Fire I should adventure to tell you that it seems to be only a multitude of most minute and subtile particles mutually touching each other put into a most rapid motion and by continual succession of some parts and decession of others renewed which conserves its motion and subsistence by preying upon and consuming the Sulphureous parts of its subject matter or fewel and the Nitrous parts of the ambient aer For even our sense bears witness that from the particles of this twofold aliment Sulphureous and Nitrous resolved to the last degree of smalness and by a most violent and rapid motion agitated the forms of Fire and Flame which differ only in degrees of density and velocity of motion do wholy result Nor doth the image I find drawn in my brain of the Soul of a Brute much differ from this description of the nature of Fire I conceive it to be no other than a certain congregation of most minute subtil and agile particles corpuscles or atoms call them what you please crowded together which being in the very first moment of life put into brisk and most rapid motion like that of the particles of Fire when first kindled do so long conserve that motion and their own subsistence as they have a continued supply of convenient nutriment sulphureous from the blood within Nitrous from the aer without and no longer For we cannot but observe that the Souls of all Brute Animals of what kind soever stand perpetually in need of a fresh supply of those two sorts of aliment insomuch that so soon as the recruit fails they languish and dye no otherwise than the flame of a lamp grows weak and dim and is extinguished for want of oyl or air But what is very remarkable besides fire and life there is not to be found in all nature any other thing whatsoever to whose act and subsistence such a supply of Sulphureous and Nitrous matter is necessary Nor is any other motion in the World whether it be of fermentation ebullition vegetation or other whatever besides that of Fire and Life subject to be arrested and suppressed immediately from defect of aer It was not then without very great reason that our Master Hippocrates affirmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Soul is
perpetually generated or made anew and that Aristotle held 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 life it self to subsist by respiration This you perhaps may judge to be but a faint and imperfect representation of the nature of a Sensitive Soul And therefore it is requisite I endevour to render it more lively by adding a few touches more concerning the Hypostasis or Subsistence of such a Soul the Life or Act and the principal Functions or Operations of it For the First of these three considerables viz. the Subsistence of a Sensitive Soul it seems not unreasonable to conceive that the Soul of a Brute doth consist of the very same Matter of which the organical Body is formed but of such particles of it as are select most subtile and active in the highest degree Which as the flower of the whole matter in the formation of the Embrion emerging out of the grosser mass and mutually uniting first force passages convenient for themselves through the whole compage of the Body and then constitute one continued thin and as it were spirituous Hypostasis adequate and coextense to the same For so soon as any matter is disposed towards animation by the law of the Creation not by Epicurus's fortuitous concurse of Atoms the Soul at the same time which is called the Form and the Body which is called the Matter begin to be formed together under a certain species according to the modell or Character impressed upon them When the more agile and spirituous particles of the seminal matter having freed themselves from the other parts of it quickly assemble together and by little and little raising a commotion stir up and agitate the grosser particles and by degrees dispose them into fit postures and places where they ought to remain and cohere and so form the body according to the figure or shape preordained by the Creator Mean while this congregation of subtile and active Particles or the Soul which by expansion enlargeth it self and insinuating her particles among others more gross and as it were interweaving them frames the body is it self exactly conformed to the figure and dimensions of the same body coextended and adapted to it as to a case or sheath doth actuate enliven and inspire all and all parts thereof While on the other side the same Soul apt and prone of it self to be dissolved and vanish into aer is by the Body containing it conserved in its act and subsistence Now according to this notion a Sensitive Soul may be conceived to be a most subtle body contained in a gross one and in all points of the same Figure with it or as it were a Spectre made up of exhalations such as some vain or superstitious heads have somtimes imagined to ascend from and hover over the graves of the dead and called them Ghosts For arising together with the body out of the material principles of Generation rightly disposed it doth as well as the body receive its determinate subsistence conform to the idea or Type consigned to it by the Law of Nature But though the same be intimately united to the body and every where closely intertexd with all parts of it as the warp and woof are interwoven in cloth yet so fine and subtle are the threads of which it doth consist that it cannot possibly by our senses be discerned nor indeed be known otherwise than by its own Effects and Operations Moreover when by any violence done either to itself or its Copartner the Body the life of this Soul is destroyed instantly the particles of which it was composed their mutual cohesion being dissolved disperse themselves and fly away not leaving any the least print or mark of their late subsistence and the Body now destitute of its conserving inmate the Soul speedily tends to corruption which sooner or later according to the less or greater compactness of the parts of the body dissolves that likewise into its first Principles or Elements For the Second it is not obscure that the Existence of this Corporeal Soul depends intirely upon the Act or Life of it and in this very respect seems exactly like to common Flame and to that alone inasmuch as the substance of both ceases to be in the very instant it ceaseth from Motion wherein the very life of both doth consist nor can either of the two be by any means whatever redintegrated so as to be numerically the same thing it was From whence it seems a genuine consequence that the Essence or Being of a Sensitive Soul hath its beginning wholly from life as from the accension or kindling of a certain subtile and inflammable matter To render this yet more plain when in the Genital matter swarms of active and spirituous chiefly Sulphureous particles predisposed to animation have met with a less number of Saline particles in a convenient focus being as it were kindled sometimes by another Soul as in all Vivaparous Animals viz. of the Generant somtimes by their own rapid motion as it happens in Oviparous they conceive life or break forth into a kind of flame which thenceforth continues to burn so long as it is constantly fed with sulphureous fewel from within and nitrous from without but instantly perisheth when either through defect of such aliment or violence from external agents it comes once to be extinct This Act of the Corporeal Soul or enkindling of the vital matter is in more perfect Animals such as are furnished with hot blood so manifestly accompanied with great heat fuliginous exhalations and other effects of fire or flame that it is difficult for even the most Sceptical person in the World to doubt that the blood is really in a continual burning and that life is rather Flame it self than only like it But in other Animals less perfect and endowed with blood less hot though we cannot say their Soul is properly Flame yet we may say it is somwhat very like it namely a swarm of most subtile active and as it were fiery particles or a spirituous Halitus which included in the body doth move and agitate the denser mass thereof and inspire the whole and actuate all the members and in some with admirable agility even beyond that of more perfect Animals as may be observed in some Reptils and Insects And that even in these there is a fiery vigor or force constantly acting may naturaly be inferred from hence that while they remain not unactive and drowsy as in winter usually they do they can no more want the aliments of life a perpetual supply of blood and aer than Animals of a hotter constitution as we shall soon declare * As for the Third and last considerable viz. the Faculties and Operations of a Corporeal or Sensitive Soul I shall only in the general observe that so soon as she begin's actually to exist she first frames for herself a convenient seat wherein to reside the body and then organizeth the same body making it according to the
strugling within us that intestine war betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit that dire conflict of the Sensitive Appetite with Reason which distracts one Man into two Duellists and which ceaseth not till one of the Combatants hath overcome and brought the other to submission And what is yet more deplorable the event of this combat is often so unhappy that the nobler part is subdued and led captive by the ignoble the forces of sensual allurements then proving too strong for all the guards of Reason though assisted by the auxiliary troops of Moral precepts and the sacred institutes of Religion When the divine Politie of the Rational Soul being subverted the whole unhappy man is furiously carried away to serve the brutish lusts of the insolent usurper and augment the triumphs of libidinous carnality which degrades him from the dignity of his nature and cassating all his royal prerogatives debases him to a parity with beasts if not below them for Reason once debauch'd so as to become brutal leads to all sorts of excess whereof beasts are seldom guilty Yet this is not alwaies the issue of the war Sometimes it happens that the victory falls to the right side and the Princess overpowring the Rebell reduces her to due submission and conformity Nay somtimes Reason after she hath been long held captive breaks off her fetters and remembring her native Soveraignty grows conscious and ashamed of her former lapses and thereupon with fresh courage and vigour renewing the conflict vanquishes and deposes the Sensitive Soul with all its legions of lusts and gloriously re-establishes herself in the throne Yea more at once to secure her empire for the future and expiate the faults of her male-administration in times past she by bitter remorse severe contrition and sharp penance punishes herself and humbles her traitorous enemy the Flesh. And as the war itself so this act of Conscience this self-chastising affection being proper to Man alone doth clearly shew that in Man there are either two Souls one Subordinate to the other or two parts of the same Soul one opposing the other and contending about the government of him and his affections But which of these two consequents is most likely to be true you may have already collected from my discourse precedent It remains then that I give you some account of the Opinions or rather Conjectures of Men for they can be no other which seem to me most probable concerning the Origin of the Reasonable Soul concerning the principle seat of it in the body concerning its connexion with the Sensitive Soul and concerning the manner of its Vnderstanding For the First if the Rational Soul be a pure Spirit i. e. a simple or incompound substance as I have already shewn her proper acts affections and objects seem to infer and as most wise men ancient and modern Ethnics and Christians Philosophers and Theologues have unanimously held her to be and if it seem inconsistent with the purity and simplicity of such a Being to be generated by the Parents who are compound Beings as reason teacheth us it is granting this I say nothing can remain to divorce me from that common opinion which holds that she is created immediately by God and infused into the body of a human Embryon so soon as that is organized formed and prepared to receive her For as to that grand Objection that the Son oftentimes most exactly resembles the Father not only in temperament shape stature features and all other things discernable in the body but in disposition also wit affections and the rest of the Animal faculties and therefore it must needs be that the Father begets the Rational Soul as well as the body it is easy to detect the weakness thereof in the violence of the illation Since all those endowments and faculties wherein the chief similitude doth consist proceed immediately from the Corporeal Soul which I grant to be indeed Ex traduce or propagated by the Father but not the Rational which is of Divine Original For the Second viz. the Rational Souls chief seat or Mansion in the body tho I cannot conceive how or in what manner an immaterial can reside in a material because I can have no representation or idea in my mind of any such thing yet nevertheless when I consider that all impressions of sensible objects whereof we are any ways conscious are carried immediately to the Imagination and that there likewise all Appetites or spontaneous conceptions and intentions of actions are excited I am very apt to judge the Imagination to be the Esâ—urial or imperial palace of the Rational Soul where she may most conveniently both receive all intelligences from her Emissaries the senses and give forth orders for government of the whole state of Man That the whole Corporeal soul should be possessed by the Rational seems neither competent to her Spiritual nature which is above Extensibility nor necessary to her Empire over all no more than it is necessary for a King to be present in all parts of his dominions at the same time And if she be as it were inthroned in any one part thereof what part so convenient so advantagious as the Phantasy where she may immediately be informed of all occurrents in the whole body and whence she may issue forth mandates for all she would have done by the whole or any member thereof I think therefore I may affirm it to be probable that this Queen of the Isle of Man hath her Court and Tribunal in the noblest part of the Sensitive Soul the Imagination made up of a select assembly of the most subtil Spirits Animal and placed in the middle of the Brain As for the Conarion or Glandula pinealis seated neer the center of the brain wherein Monsieur Des Cartes took such pains to lodge this Celestial ghest all our most curious Anatomists will demonstrate that Glandule to be ordained for another and that a far less noble use which here I need not mention For the Third to wit what obligeth the Rational Soul to continue resident in the Imagination during this life truely I cannot think either that she is capable of or that she needs any other ligament or tye than the infringible law of nature or Will of her Divine Creator who makes and destines her to reside in the body of man to be his Forma informans and gives her therefore a strong inclination to inhabit that her inne or lodging ordaining her to have a certain dependence as to her operation upon the Phantasy so that without the help and subserviency thereof she can know or understand little or nothing at all For it is from the Imagination alone that she takes all the representations of things and the fundamental ideas upon which she afterward builds up all her Science all her wisdom And therefore though the Mind of one man understands more and reasoneth better than another it doth not thence follow that their Rational
such as the Rational Soul by her excellent faculties and proper acts appear's to be can act physicaly in and upon a gross and ponderous body such as ours are immediately or without the mediation of a third thing which though corporeal too may yet be of a substance so refined and subtil as to approach somwhat neerer to the nature of a pure Spirit than the body itself doth and therefore for the more probable explication of the Phenomena of the Passions which are not raised in the Rational Soul I found myself obliged to admit her to have a Sensitive one conjoyned with her to receive her immediate suggestions and to actuate the body according to her soveraign will and pleasure there being less of disparity betwixt the most thin and subtil bodies of Light and Flame whereof many eminent Philosophers have conceived a Sensitive Soul to consist and a substance purely Spiritual than between a pure spirit and a gross heavy body as ours is Secondly it seem'd to me no less unconceivable whence that dismal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or intestin war which every Man too frequently feels within himself and whereof even St. Paul himself so sadly complained when in Epist. ad Roman cap. 3. he cries out video aliam legem in membris meis repugnantem legi mentis meae should arise if not from a Duumvirate as it were of Rulers contending for superiority within us and inclining us two contrary ways at once For to conceive that one and the. same Simple thing such as the Reasonable Soul is rightly presumed to be can be repugnant to itself or at one and the same time be possessed with opposite affections is manifestly absurd There are indeed who to evade this absurdity imagine it possible that of one and the same Rational simple Soul there may be two distinct Faculties or powers opposite each to other from whose clashings and contrary inclinations this civil war may proceed But to oblige us to swallow this palpable contradiction these Men ought to have reconciled those two repugnant notions of Simple and Compound and to have told us why in the same simple substance of fire there cannot likewise be two mutualy repugnant faculties heat and cold In a Mixed body there may be I confess opposite faculties and therefore the like may be imagined also in the Rational Soul if she be conceived to be of a mixed or compound nature but this is against their own supposition and destructive to the natural immortality of the Soul What then can remain to cause this dire war daily observed within us betwixt the allurements of our Sense on one side and the grave dictates of our Mind on the other but two distinct Agents the Rational Soul and the Sensitive coexistent within us and hotly contending about the conduct of our Will But You Sir will perhaps tell me there may another and that a more probable cause be given of this hostility and that the searching wit of Monsieur des Cartes hath been so happy to discover what it is in libr. de Passion part 1. art 47. where he thus reasoneth In no other thing saith he but in the repugnancy that is between the motions which the Body by its spirits and those which the Soul by her will do at the same time endeavour to excite in the Glandula Pinealis in the brain consist all the Conflicts which Men commonly imagin betwixt the inferior part of the Soul which is named the Sensitive and the Superior which is called the Rational or betwixt the appetites natural and the will For in us there is only one Soul which hath in her no variety of parts the same that is Sensitive is also Rational and all the appetites thereof are volitions The Error by which divers persons as it were that are for the most part mutualy contrary come to be imposed upon her hath proceeded only from hence that hitherto her functions have not been sufficiently distinguished from the functions of the Body to which alone is to be ascribed all that can be observed in us to be repugnant to our reason So that here is no other Contrast but that when the Glandule seated in the middle of the brain is impell'd on one part by the Soul and on the other by the Spirits Animal which are nothing but bodies as I have before declared it often happens that those two impulses or impressions are contrary each to other and that the strongger hindereth the effect of the weaker Now there may be distinguished two kinds of motions excited in the Glandule by the spirits some represent to the Soul objects that move the Senses or impressions found in the brain and use no force upon the will others use force namely those that make the Passions or the motions of the body that accompany them And as for the first though they often hinder the actions of the Soul or be hindered by them yet because they are not directly contrary there is no strife or contention observed in them but only betwixt the last and the Wills that are repugnant to them for Example betwixt the endeavour by which the spirits impell the Glandule to induce upon the Soul a desire of some one thing and that by which the Soul repells the same Glandule by her will to avoid it And this chiefly demonstrateth this strife that since the will hath not power as hath been already shown to excite Passions directly the Soul is therefore compell'd to use art and to apply herself to the consideration of various things successively Whence if it happen that any one of those various things hath the force of changing for a moment the cours of the spirits it may so fall out that the next thing that occurs to be considered may want the like force and the spirits may resume their former cours because the precedent disposition in the nerves in the heart and in the blood hath not been changed whereby it comes to pass that the Soul almost in the same moment feels herself impell'd to desire and decline the same thing And this hath given Men occasion of imagining in the Soul two powers mutualy repugnant But yet there may be conceived a certain Conflict in this that oftentimes the same cause that exciteth some Passion in the Soul exciteth also in the Body some certain motions whereunto the Soul contributeth nothing at all and which she stops or endevours to stop so soon as she observes them as is manifest from experience when that which exciteth Fear causeth also the spirits to flow into the Muscles that serve to move the leggs to flight and occasioneth the will of exercising Courage to stop them To this Objection therefore I answer 1. that had this excellent Man Monsieur des Cartes been but half as conversant in Anatomy as he seems to have been in Geometry doubtles he would never have lodged so noble a guest as the Rational Soul in so incommodious a closet of the brain as the
Glandula Pincalis is that use whereof hath been demonstrated to be no other but to receive into its spongy cavities from two little nerves a certain serous Excrement and to exonerate the same again into its vein which nature hath therefore made much larger than the artery that accompanieth it and which having no Communication with the external organs of the Senses cannot with any colour of reason be thought the part of the brain wherein the Soul exerciseth her principal faculties of judging and commanding 2. This Glandule which he supposeth to be so easily flexible and yielding to contrary impulses is not loosely suspended but fixed so that whoever hath once beheld the solid basis strong consistence and firm connexion thereof will hardly ever be brought to allow it capable of any impulse to either side though by the greatest Hurricano of spirits imaginable much less by every light motion of them excited by external objects affecting the senses 3 Though we should grant this Gland to be both the Throne of the Soul and most easily flexible every way yet hath Des Cartes left it still unconceivable how an Immaterial Agent not infinite comes to move by impuls a solid body without the mediation of a third thing that is less disparil or disproportionate to both Now these things duely considered you will I presume no longer imagine the Conflicts or Combats that frequently happen within us betwixt the Rational and Sensitive Appetites to consist only in the repugnancy of the impulses of this little Glandule by the Spirits on one side to those of the same Glandule by the Soul on the other Besides that the Soul hath power to excite Corporeal Passions directly that is without considering successively various things is manifest from her soveraignity over the body which in all voluntary actions is absolute and uncontrollable and in the very instance of Fear alleadged by our Author where she determineth her Will to Courage to oppose the danger suggested instantly and without running through a long series of various considerations for which she then hath not time sufficient However evident enough it is that this conceipt of repugnant impulses of this Gland in the brain is so far from giving light to the reason of the Conflict here considered that it rather augmenteth the obscurity thereof by implying two contrary Appetites or Wills in one and the same Soul at one and the same time Whereas the supposition of two Souls mutually opposing each others Appetites doth render the same intelligible Against this opinion of a Duality of Souls in one Man some have I well know with not a little confidence urged the Sentence of some of the Fathers yea and of whole Councils condemning all who should assert it and more particularly Concil 8. act 10. Vienn in Clem. VII Lateran 3. sess 8. But this Sir is Brutum fulmen dangerous to none terrible only to the Unlearned For to any understanding reader of those decrees it is clearly manifest that the edge of them is turned against first the doctrin of the Maniches holding two human Souls in every individual Man one polluted with the stain of vices and derived from an evil principle the other incontaminate and proceeding immediately from God yea more a particle of the Divine Essence itself then the Platonics also and Averrhoists teaching that the Rational Soul is not man's forma informans but part of the Anima Mundi or Universal Soul but not against the asserters of two Souls coexistent one simply Reasonable the other merely Sensitive in every single person in that innocent sense I deliver it And thus have the same Decrees been judiciously interpreted by the religious Philosophers of the Collegue of Conimbra who as of all Men they have discoursed most acutely and profoundly of this Argument so have they with greatest moderation treated the Defendents of this opinion by me here embraced For in 1. de Generat cap. 4. quaest 21. art 2. though they expresly avow their adherence rather to the common belief of the singularity of the Human Soul as most consentaneous to the sense of the Church yet they declare also that the contrary opinion ought not to be censured as heretical or erroneous Why therefore should I fear to espouse it especially if to the reasons here urged and others no less considerable alledged by me in the third Section of the Treatise to which this Epistle invites you be added for confirmation that so celebrated text of St. Paul ad Thessal 1. cap. 5. vers 23. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 integer vester Spiritus anima corpus c. Where our most learned Dr. Hammond of pious memory in his Annotations on the place conceives the Apostle to divide the whole Man into three constituent parts viz. the Body which comprehendeth the flesh and members the Vital Soul which being also Animal or Sensitive is common likewise to Brutes and the Spirit by which is denoted the Reasonable Soul originally created by God infused into the body and from thence after death to return to God and this genuin exposition of his he confirms by agreeing testimonies both of Ethnic Philosophers and some ancient Fathers To these give me leave to super-add ex abundanti the concordant suffrages of three eminent Philosophers of our own age namely the Lord Chancellor Bacon who in his 4 Book of the Advancement of Learning chap. 3. gravely discoursing of the parts of Knowledge concerning the Mind or Soul of Man divideth it into that which declares the nature of the Reasonable Soul which is a thing Divine and that which treateth of the Unreasonable Soul which is common to us with Beasts and then proceeds to affirm at large that the former hath its original from the inspiration or breath of God the later from the matrices of the Elements the immortal Gassendus de Physiologia Epicuri cap. de Animae sede Passionibms Animi c. and the now flourishing Dr. Willis in libr. de Anima Brutorum cap. 7. whose words I forbear to transcribe out of design to increase your satisfaction by obliging you to read them at your leisure in the places cited Now if solid Reasons Authority Divine and the judgment of many sublime Wits and profound Philosophers aswell Ancient as Modern be of any weight to recommend this neither heretical nor improbable opinion to me certainly I need not blush to incline thereunto Notwithstanding this I recount the same tanquam in Hypothesi only as a supposition convenient to solve the Phenomena of the Passions not as an article of my faith nor had I so importunely insisted thus long upon arguments to justify my approbation thereof in this Letter had I not through want of Books omitted to doe it where I ought in the III. Section of the Discourse itself ¶ The SECOND advertisement I owe you Friend is this that the greatest part of what is delivered in the same Discourse concerning the nature substance faculties Knowledge c. of a
in the Genital parts and is possess'd with an earnest longing to transmit the same into a place most commodious for its accension into new Souls For as it is by natural instinct that every living creature is from its very â—irth directed to choose food most agreeable to its nature and daily to feed thereupon aswell that the grosser web of the body may from thence by insensible addition and assimilation of new parts be augmented more and more until it attain to due magnitude or perfection of stature as that the finer intertexture of the Soul may be by continualy repeted supplies of Spirits rendred equal and coextense to the body and inabled to execute all her functions vigorously and effectualy So it is also from the same natural instinct that when by that gradual amplification of all lineaments of both body and Soul the living creature hath at length arrived at its full strength and growth the Animal Spirits then begin to abound and swarm in greater multitudes than is necessary to the uses of th' individual and the luxuriant or superfluous troops of them together with a certain refined and generous Humor derived from the whole body are daily transferr'd into the Genitals natures both Laboratory and Magazin for propagation of the Species there to be further prepared and formed into the Idea of an Animal exactly like to the first Generant which afterwards is in the amorous congress of male and femal transmitted into the womb therein to receive its accomplishment Having thus lightly described the principal Faculties and innate Dispositions of a Sensitive Soul as also the fundamental laws of her Oeconomy it remains only that we consider the various Mutations and irregular Commotions to which she is liable That the Corporeal Soul while as a Flame burning within her organical body she on every side diffuseth heat and light is herself subject to various Tremblings noddings Eclipses inequalities and disorderly Commotions as all Flame is observed to be this I say is not obscurely discernable in the Effects of those alterations which happen chiefly in her more violent Passions though indeed not so clearly and distinctly discernable in Brutes as in Men in respect they are subject to fewer passions than Man is and want the faculty of speech to express any one of those few they feel in themselves Wherefore that we may in some order briefly recount the most remarkable at least of these turbulent Affections incident to the Sensitive Soul we shall shew what Alterations she may suffer 1 from her own proper Passions 2 from the temperament and diseases of the Body 3 from various impressions of sensible Objects and 4 from exorbitant motions of the Animal Spirits Most certain it is that the Flame of the Soul doth not always burn equaly or at one constant rate but now more now less sometimes briskly and clearly sometimes dully and dimly For it is not only enlarged or contracted according as the fewel brought to feed it is more or less in quantity and more or less sulphureous in quality but the very accension of it in the heart though of itself moderate and equal is yet sometimes so varied by the fannings as it were of the Passions that one while it blazeth up to a dangerous excess as it usualy happens in great Anger and Indignation another while it is in danger of being blown out by suddain and surprizing Ioy or almost suffocated by unexpected Terror or astonishing Grief The like may be said of the rest of the Passions or strong Affects by whose various motions the Flame of life like the flame of a candle exposed to the winds is variously agitated and changed as will more clearly appear from our ensuing discourse of the Passions in particular Nor is it from the suddain puffs or impulses of Passions alone that such immutations and inequalities as these proceed Sometimes it comes to pass that the Vital Flame by slow degrees and as it were Hecticaly diminished becomes little pale faint and half-extinct as may be observed in colder temperaments in Leucophlegmatic bodies in Hydropic persons in Virgins troubled with the Green-sickness and other the like chronic diseases In which the blood being more serous or watery than it ought to be yields but little flame and that too inconstant and beclouded with fume and vapour like that which ariseth from wet and green wood On the contrary it somtimes happens that the blood being immoderately sulphureous is almost wholly put into a conflagration as is frequently observed in Choleric constitutions and feverish distempers and great debauches with Wine And as by these and such like disorders of the blood the accension of the Vital Flame is with respective variety altered so likewise do the Lucid particles that arise to the brain from thence and constitute the beamy web of Animal Spirits become more or less luminous and regular or irregular in their motions For instance From the diminished or restrained accension of the blood the sphere of the Sensitive Soul is contracted into less compass than that of the body and reduced to such narrowness that it cannot re-expand itself so as to illustrate all the brain and actuate the whole contexture of the nerves with requisite brightness and vigour And on the other side when the flame of life is much intended or increased provided it blaze not to the hight of a fever then the whole system of Animal spirits thence deradiated being proportionably augmented swells to an expansion beyond the limits of the body insomuch that a Man transported and exuâ—â—ing for great Ioy or puffed up with Pride seems to be inflated above measure and hardly able to contain himself within the modest bounds of his own dimensions Besides these Alterations which the Sensitive or Lucid part of the Soul suffers from the various changes of the Vital there are others and those very many which it receives immediately both from affections of the Brain and Nerves and from External objects making impressions thereupon which perturb the consistence and usual order of its parts For example at night the Brain itself from a too plentifull infusion of the Nutrive liquor as from a gloomy cloud overcast seems replete with vapours so that in sleep the Lucid part of the Soul is wholly obscured and envellopped as it were with darkness Nor is it rare to have Eclipses of one or more of the Faculties Animal meerly from some morbisic matter or gross humor fixed somwhere in the brain and obstructing the ways of the Animal spirits Somtimes these Animal spirits are not themselves sufficieiently pure clear and bright but infected and beclouded with incongruous steams saline vitriolic nitrous and other the like darksom exhalations which deform the images of things drawn in the brain change them into false and chimerical representations and raise exorbitant motions of the spirits Whence it somtimes comes to pass that the whole Soul undergoes various metamorphoses and is invested in strange apparitions
both conjoyned and improved into Habits by long practice and experience yet in the end we shall be forced to confess that even the most intricate and most cunning of all their actions come far short of those that are ordinarily done by Man by virtue of the Reasonable Soul wherewith he is by the immense bounty of his Creator endowed This is a Verity so obvious to every Man of common sense and understanding so evident by its own splendor that it needs neither Arguments drawn from reason to establish nor Examples drawn from frequent observations to illustrate it especially now after the many excellent discourses thereupon writen by Learned Men of almost all ages all nations all professions It being therefore unnecessary for me by prolix reasoning to evince and superfluous by multiplicity of instances to elucidate the vast disparity betwixt the proper Acts and Operations of a Reasonable Soul and those inferior ones of a Sensitive I shall only in brief and analytically recount to you a few of those many Excellencies and Prerogatives essential to the former and by the law of nature incommunicable to the later The Preeminence then of Mans Reasonable Soul is undeniably manifest from both her Objects and her Acts. Her Objects are all things whatsoever true or false real or imaginary within or without the World sensible or insensible infinite or finite for to all these can she extend her unconfined power of speculation I doubt indeed whether it be possible for her in this life while she is obliged to speculate all things by the help of images or corporeal representations to have an adequate and full cognition of the superexcellent nature of God but yet it cannot be denied that she is capable of knowing for certain that there is such an incomprehensible Being as God and that He is infinite and Eternal I doubt also whether the mind of Man be capable of any true notion of an Angell Spirit Daemon or other the like Beings which the Schools commonly how intelligibly let others dispute call immaterial Substances because I myself can represent to my thoughts nothing but under some certain figure and quantity which are inseparable from body and yet who dares deny th' Existence of such Beings in the World To speculate such objects then as fall not under the perception of any of the senses is the prerogative of a Rational Soul nor can a Sensitive possibly have any knowledge of things above the sphere of her own nature all her faculties being corporeal and by consequence limited to corporeal objects and those too no other than what are perceptible by the senses Her Acts also equaly declare her transcendent Powers That act of simple apprehension which in Brutes is Imagination is in Man Intellection and the intellect presides over imagination discerning the Errors of it occasion'd by the senses and correcting them yea subliming the notions thereof into true and usefull ones And as for forming of Propositions by compounding or dividing the simple notions of sensible things that power is indeed common to the Sensitive Soul also and usualy exercised by her when an image of some object newly admitted meets with one or more images either fâ—â—merly stored up in the Memory or at that instant suggested by natural instinct and is found associable or repugnant to them but yet the same falls incomparably short of that which belongs to the Human Intellect Which doth not only review all propositions conceiv'd from the Phantasy but judges also whether they be true or false congruous or incongruous and then orders and disposes them accordingly into trains of notions convenient either to Speculation or to practice Moreover it restrains the Phantasy of itself instable and prone to ramble through various phantasms calls it away from extravagant and useless conceptions directs it to others more conform to reason and at pleasure confines it within certain bounds that it may not divert or range too wide from the purpose All which Acts give clear evidence that there is in Man a Soul superiour to the sensitive and which moderates and governs all the faculties and operations of it yea more yet which from representations sensible deduces many other notions of things altogether unknown to sense and which the Phantasy is of itself wholly incapable to imagine For it understands Axioms or first principles and that by its own power alone without recourse to corporeal species and what is yet more noble and sublime by a reflex act views itself thinks that it thinks from thence certainly knowing its ' own Existence which cannot be either perceived by sense or imagined by Phantasy Whereas neither the Sense nor Imagination for of these there are no images extant can perceive that they perceive or imagine To these royal prerogatives of Mans Rational Soul let us subjoyn the native right she hath to the whole Encyclopaedia or Zodiac of Arts and Sciences Theology Logic Physic Metaphysics Mathematics Algebra Geometry Astronomy Mechanics which being all Theology alone excepted the products or creatures of Mans Mind sufficiently attest their Author to be an Agent Spiritual admirably intelligent immaterial and therefore immortal Now if this be true as most certainly it is then one of these two Assumptions must be so too Either the Rational Soul of man doth alone perform all offices not only of Vnderstanding and discourse but of sense also and life and so administer the whole oeconony of Human nature Or else there are in every individual Man two distinct Souls conjoined and acting together one only Rational t'other merely Sensitive that as Queen regent this as inferior and subordinate The FIRST seems to me not a little improbable For 1 all acts of the Senses and animal Motions as likewise the Passions are corporeal divided and extended to various parts and therefore the Rational Soul which we conceive to be incorporeal indivisible and finite seems incapable to cause or impress those motions immediately or by herself To me I confess it seems Unintelligible how an incorporeal Agent not infinite can physically act in and upon a gross body immediately or without the intervention of a third thing which though corporeal too is yet notwithstanding of parts so spirituous and of a constitution so subtil as to approach somwhat neerer to the nature of a pure Spirit than solid and ponderous body doth Flame and light I acknowledge to be bodies but yet methinks there is less of disproportion or disparity betwixt them and a substance purely spiritual than is betwixt a pure Spirit and a gross heavy body such as ours is And therefore in my weak judgment it is more conceivable that the Reasonable Soul should have some spirituous and subtile thing as flame or light is viz. the Sensitive Soul conjoyned with her to be a convenient Medium betwixt herself and the gross body to receive her immediate influence and actuate the body according to her will and pleasure than it is that she should immediately move
Souls are unequal in their natural capacity of understanding and discourse because the disparity proceeds immediately from difference of Imagination mediately and principally from the various dispositions of the Brain For when the Animal Spirits being either of themselves less pure subtil and active than is requisite or hinderd in their expansion and motions are not able duely to irradiate and actuate the Brain affected with some distemper or originally formed amiss in such case the Phatasms created in the Imagination must be either deficient or distorted and the Intellect being obliged to judge of them accordingly must be misinformed Hence it often happens that by reason of some wound contusion or other great hurt done to the brain men who formerly were of acute wit and excellent understanding are more or less deprived of those noble Faculties and degenerate into mere fools or idiots For the acquiring and loseing the habit of intellection and ratiocination depends totally upon the Brain and Imagination the corporeal subject thereof but the Intellect it self since it hath no parts cannot be perfected by parts being from the beginning and of its own nature a full and perfect power of Understanding Nor doth it by accession of any whatever Habit understand more but is it self rather a Habit alwayes comparated to understand And in truth the principal Function of the human Intellect seems to be this that it be of its own nature merely intelligent that is knowing things not by ratiocination but by simple intuition But during its confinement within the body it is surrounded with that darkness that it doth not simply nakedly and as it were by way of intuition perceive all things which it understands but attains to most of its knowledge by reasoning that is successively and by proceeding as it were by degrees If therefore the Organ or instrument by the help of which the Intellect is obliged to ratiocinate or gradualy to attain to the knowledge of things be unfit or out of tune no wonder if it be not able to make good Musick thereupon Concerning the Fourth and last thing therefore namely the Manner how this Unintelligible Intellect of man comes to know speculate and judge of all Phantasms or images pourtraid in the Imagination I can much more easily guess what it is not than what it is I am not inclined to espouse their conceit who tell us that the Rational Soul sitting in the brain somewhere near the original of the nerves belonging to the Senses as a Spider sits watching in the centre of her net and feeling all strokes made upon them by the Species of sensible objects distinguishes and judges of their several qualities and proprieties by the different modes of their impressions Because the supposition of a percussion or stroke to be made by a Corporeal image is manifestly repugnant to a Faculty incorporeal But whether or no I ought to acquiesce in that other opinion delivered and maintained by a whole army of Contemplative men viz. That the Intellect knowes and discerns things by simple Intuition i.e. by beholding their Images represented in the Phantasy as we see our faces represented in a mirror or looking-glass truely I am yet to learn from wiser heads than mine For though I admire the subtilty of the conceipt and love not to be immodestly Sceptical especially in matters that transcend my narrow comprehension yet to speak ingenuously I as little understand how Intuition can be ascribed to an immaterial that hath no Eyes as I do how Feeling of strokes can be ascribed to a thing that cannot be touched Nevertheless I will not point blanck deny this latter opinion to be true only because I cannot perceive the Competency of such an act as intuition to the incorporeal Soul of man for that were to make my scanty reason the measure of truth and to confide more in my own dulness than in the admired perspicacity of so many eminent Wits preceding me Wherefore having confess'd my ignorance I refer the matter to your arbitration allowing you as much time as you shall think fit seriously to consider the same and in the interim contentedly suspending my curiosity which hath too often perplexed me For hitherto could I never drive it into my head how those terms of infusion connexion and intuition can be intelligibly applyed to a spiritual or incompound essence such as we conceive the Reasonable Soul to be and if I have used them in this discourse it was rather because I could think of none less improper than because I approved them as adequate to the notions to which they are vulgarly accommodated Besides I hold it extremly difficult not to speak some non-sense when we adventure to treat of the nature of spirits whereof we understand so little and you I presume will rather pitty than condemn a man for stumbling in the dark But I have too long detain'd you upon Preliminaries and therefore deprecating your impatience invite you now from the porch into the little Theatre of the Passions which I design'd to erect more for your divertisement than study SECT IV. Of the Passions of the Mind in general TAking it for granted then from the reasons precedent that in Man besides the Rational Soul by which he becomes a Reasonable creature there is also a Sensitive one by which he is made a living and sensitive creature and that this later being merely Corporeal and coextens to the body it animates is by the law of its nature subject to various Mutations I come in the next place to consider what are the most remarkable of those Mutations and the Causes whence they usually arise as likewise the principal effects of them upon the body and mind of man Obvious it is to every mans notice that there is a twofold state or condition of his Sensitive Soul one of quiet and tranquillity another of disquiet and perturbation every man living finding his spirit sometimes calm and serene sometimes agitated and ruffled more or less by the winds and tempests of passions raised within him In the state of Tranquillity it seems probable that the whole Corporeal Soul being coextens to the whole body inshrining it as the body is to the skin envesting it doth at the same time both inliven all parts with the vital flame of the blood to that end carried in a perpetual round as the vulgar conceive the Sun to be uncessantly moved round about the Earth to illuminate and warm all parts of it and irradiate and invigorate them with a continual supply of Animal spirits for the offices of Sense and Motion And this Halcyon state certainly is the only fair weather we enjoy within the region of our breast and the best part of human life On the contrary in the state of Perturbation all that excellent Oeconomy is more or less discomposed Then it seems that the same frail soul is so strongly shock'd and commoved that not only her vital part the blood the calm and equal circulation
Moral of which in their order 1. Passions meerly Physical or which properly belong to the Sensitive Soul alone are those natural and occult inclinations and aversations commonly call'd Sympathies and Antipathies whereby one Man more than another is not only disposed but even by secret impuls forced to affect or dislike such or such a person or thing without any manifest cause or inducement so to do Of Sympathies betwixt Persons there is great variety of Examples especialy in Lovers among whom many are not allured by that grand bait of the Sensitive Soul Beauty but strongly attracted and as it were fascinated by they know not what hidden Congruity or as the French call it agreeableness of Spirits which enchains them so firmly to the persons beloved that notwithstanding the deformities they see and acknowledge to be in them yea and the contempt they somtimes receive from them they still doat upon and with delightful submissions court and adore them And as for Antipathies as well toward Persons as things instances of them also are without number and many shew themselves at our very table Where one Man abhors a brest of Mutton yet loves the Shoulder cut from it a second swoons at the sight of Eels and yet will feast upon Lampreys or Congers a third abominates Chees but is pleased with Milk a fourth devests rosted Pigg yet can make a meal upon bacon This Man sweats at presence of a Cat that falls into an agony by casting his eye upon a Frogg or Toad an other can never be reconciled to Oysters Nay more there are who feel themselves ready to faint if a Cat be hidden in some secret place of the room wherein they are though they suspect no such encountre of their natural enemy till they are wounded with the invisible darts or emanations from her body And all these admirable Effects proceed not from any positive Evil or malignity in the things abhorred for what 's one Mans meat is an others poyson but only from their incongruity or occult Enmity to this or that particular Sensitive Soul For if at any time it happens that the consistence of Animal Spirits that constitute the lucid or Sensitive part of this Soul be by the encountre of any object put into great disorder she ever after abhors the approach or effâ—luvia of the same Whereas the Congruity of particles proceeding from an object to the contexture of the Soul is on the contrary the ground of all her secret Amities 2. Passions Metaphysical or which seem to have their first rise from and principaly to relate to the Rational Soul are those which Divines call devout and religious Affections directed to objects Supernatural and chiefly to God For when our nobler Soul reflecting upon the excellency and immortality of her nature aspires by sublime speculations toward her supreme felicity the contemplation and love of her Creator and determines her Will to persue that incomprehensible because infinite subject of all perfections which alone can satisfy her understanding with light or knowledge and her will with love she doth not only exercise herself in simple and abstracted conceptions such as are proper to her immaterial essence alone and conformable to the dignity of the thing she speculates but communicates her affects also to the Sensitive Soul by whose subordinate motions she is obliged to act respectively to her end And these motions or acts being thus traduced from the superiour to the inferior Soul and thence derived first to the brain and imagination then to the heart produce therein and so in the blood the various motions that constitute such Passions as we observe in our selves when we are most ardently urged to acts of devotion and piety toward the supream Being Whence it is doubtless that Divine love detestation of sin repentance hope of Salvation fear of incensing Divine justice and most if not all other acts or passions of devotion are commonly ascribed to the heart and that not without some reason For though I cannot admit the heart to be the Seat of the Passions as the Aristoteleans unanimously hold it to be only because of the sensible alterations therein produced in most passions since in truth those alterations are rather consequents than causes of Passions and since they are not felt by us as in the heart but only by means of the nerves descending thither from the brain as pain is not felt as in the foot but by intervention of nerves betwixt the foot and the brain and as the starrs appear to us as in heaven by mediation of their light affecting our Optick nerves So that it is no more necessary the Soul should exercise her functions or receive her passions immediately in the heart only because she feels her passions therein than it is she should be in heaven because she sees the starrs to be there or in the foot because pain appears to her to be there Notwithstanding this I say yet the adscription of these devout Passions to the heart is not altogether destitute of reason For for instance when the inferiour Soul is commanded by the Superior to humble and as it were to prostrate herself in adoration of the sacred Majesty of God instantly both parts thereof as well the Sensitive as the Vital are forced to repress and restrain their wonted emanations or effusions Whereupon the Animal Spirits being in whole legions withdrawn from minis tring to the Imagination and Senses are by the nerves transmitted in crowds to the heart which while they closely contract and shut they cause the blood to remain longer than is usual in the cavities thereof and by that means keep it both from being too much kindled in the Lungs and from being sent from the heart in too great abundance into the rest of the body and more especialy into the brain as if Nature itself had instituted that in sacred passions the blood or principal seat of life should be offered up to the Author of life upon the altar of the heart while the brain or seat of reason is kept serene and clear Nor is it difficult to a man praying to Almighty God with fervency of Spirit to observe in himself that his blood is more and more arrested and detained within his breast the while insomuch that his heart seems to swell his lungs to be opprest and he is forced frequently to interrupt his oraisons with profound sighs for attraction of fresh aer as if the reasonable Soul not content to devote herself alone and pour forth her holy desires to God laboured to make a libation also of the vital blood for a propitiatory oblation So that though the Soul cannot in strictness of truth be said to receive her passions in the heart yet since the alterations caused in us by them are greater and more sensible in the heart and consequently in the blood than in any other part of the whole body beside I am not so addicted to vitilitigation as to contend about
is a Devotion also to ones Prince or Country or City or to any private person whom we esteem above ourselves And the difference betwixt these three sorts of Love is chiefly manifest from their divers Effects For when in each of them the person loving considers himself as joyned and united to the thing loved he is always ready to quit or leave the least part of the whole that he makes with the same to preserve the rest Whence it comes that in simple Benevolence the Lover always prefer's himself to the thing loved but on the contrary in Devotion he always prefers the thing loved so far above himself that he fears not to dye for the conversation thereof of which noble Love there have been glorious Examples in men who have voluntarily exposed themselves to certain death for defence of their Prince or of their City yea sometimes also for private persons to whom they had particularly devoted themselves This Distinction being admitted as in my opinion it well deserves to be there will remain no necessity of constituting so many distinct sorts of Love as they are various objects to excite it seeing there are many Passions very different among themselves and in respect of their several objects which yet agree in this that they all participate of Love For Example the Passion by which the Ambitious is carried on to Glory the Avaricious to riches the Drunkard to wine the Libidinous to women the Honest to his friend the Vxorious to his wife the good Father to his Children c. differ very much among themselves and yet so far resemble each other that they all participate of Love But the love of the first four aimeth at nothing but the possession of their peculiar objects nor have they indeed any thing of love for those objects but only Desire mixt with some other special passions Whereas the love of a Parent to his Children is so pure that he desires to obtain nothing at all from them nor to possess them in any other manner than he doth already or to bring them to a neerer conjunction with himself but considering them as parts of himself seeks their good as his own yea with greater care than his own as not fearing to purchase their felicity at the rate of his own undoing And the Love of an honest man to his Friends is also of the same perfection But the Love of a man to his Mistress commonly distinguished by the name of the Erotic passion is alwaies mixed with desire of Fruition And as for Hatred though that be directly opposed to Love yet cannot it be distinguished into as many different kinds because the difference betwixt Evils from which we are by our will separated cannot be so well observed as that which is betwixt the Goods to which we are by by our will joyned From what hath here been said concerning Love as distinguishable chiefly by the several degrees of Estimation conceived for the thing loved it may easily be collected that from Love ariseth Cupidity or Desire whereby the Soul is disposed to covet for the time to come those things which she represent's to herself as convenient and likely to afford her pleasure Thus we desire not onely the presence of an absent good but also the conservation of the good that is present yea we desire likewise the absence of Evil aswell that which is already incumbent as that which we believe possible to come upon us in the future For in Cupidity or Desire of any thing whatsoever which the Soul judges to be wanting to herself she alwaies looketh foreward to the time to come It may be collected also that though Desire cannot be without Love yet Love may be without Desire of possessing or enjoying the object otherwise than by the pure embraces of the will alone And this may be confirmed by observations of the different Motions of the Soul and Spirits raised in these two Passions and the divers symptoms consequent thereunto For In Love when it is not accompanyed either with Cupidity or with vehement Ioy or with Sadness but continues pure and simple the Soul being incited to conjoyn herself in will to objects that appear good and convenient to her and instantly dilated the Animal Spirits are like lightning dispatched from the brain by the nerves instantly into the Heart and by their influx render the pulse thereof more strong and vigorous than is usual and consequently the circulation of the blood more nimble and expedite Whereupon the blood being more copiously diffused by the arteries and more particularly those ascending to the brain carries with it a recruit of vital spirits newly enkindled which being there further sublimed or refined and corroborating the idea or image that the first cogitation hath formed of the thing loved oblige and in some sort compell the the Soul to continue fixed upon that cogitation and continually to indulge the same And herein if I am not much mistaken doth the passion of Love principally consist For they who are affected therewith have their pulse equal the Spirits that cause it being immitted into the Cardiac nerves with an equal and placid motion but stronger and more frequent then ordinary they feel a certain agreable heat diffused in their breast they find their brain invigorated by abundance of Spirits and thereby grow more ingenuous and in fine they digest their meat quickly and perform all actions of life readily and with alacrity All which may be ascribed to the free and expedite but equal Circulution of the blood caused by a copious influx of Animal Spirits into the Heart Whence we may safely conclude that this grateful passion is highly beneficial to all parts of the body and conduceth much to the conservation of health provided it continue within the bounds of moderation But if it exceed them and break forth into a wild and furious desire then on the contrary by degrees enervating the members it at length induceth very great weakness and decay upon the whole body For Love accompanied with vehement desire doth so intirely imploy the Soul in the consideration of the object desired that she retains in the brain the greatest part of the Spirits there to represent to her the image thereof so that the whole stock of nerves and all the Muscles are defrauded of the influx of Spirits from the brain with which they ought to be continualy inspired or invigorated Whence in process of time the whole Oeconomy of nature is perverted and an universal languor ensueth And in Cupidity whereby the Soul is so effused towards good or pleasure represented to her as certainly to come as that she is suddainly checked and contracted again by reflection upon the delay of the same there occurs this Singular that it agitateth the heart more violently and crouds the brain with more legions of spirits than any other of all the passions For out of Desire to obtain what we ardently pursue the Spirits are
most swiftly transmitted from the brain into all parts of the body that may any way serve to do the actions requisite to that end but above all into the Heart which being thereby dilated and contracted both more strongly and more frequently than in the state of tranquility quickly forceth up a more abundant supply of Vital Spirits with the blood into the brain aswell that they may there conserve and corroborate the Idea of this Desire as that whole brigades of them may be from thence dispatched into the Organs of the Senses and into all Muscles whose motions may more especially conduce to obtain what is so vehemently desired And from the Souls reflexion upon the delay of her fruition which she at the same time makes there ariseth in her a sollicitude or trouble whereby she is checked and contracted again and the spirits are by intervals retracted toward the brain So that the more subtil and spiritual blood being with the spirits recalled from the outward parts the heart comes to be constringed and streightned the Circulation of the blood retarded and consequently the whole body left without spirits and vigor Let none therefore admire if many of those Men whom Lust or Concupiscence Ambition Avarice or any other more fervent desire hath long exercised and inslaved be by continual sollicitude of mind brought at length into an ill Habit of body to leanness a defect of Nutrition Melancholy the Scurvy Consumption and other incurable diseases Nor are you after this so clear manifestation of the great disparity betwixt the Motions and necessary Consequents of Love when pure and simple and those of Love commixt with Cupidity or ardent Desire of enjoyment longer to doubt but that Love and Desire are Passions essentially different notwithstanding it be true that the Later is alwaies dependent upon the Former And as for the Motions of the Spirits and blood in that anxious Affect of the mind Hatred which is directly opposed to Love evident it is that when the Soul is moved to withdraw herself from any object that appears to threaten Evil or pain instantly the Spirits are retracted inwards to the brain and principaly to that part of it which is the instrument or mint of Imagination there to corroborate the idea of Hatred which the first thought hath formed of the ungrateful object and to dispose the Soul to sentiments full of bitterness and detestation So that the while very few of them and those too inordinately and by unequal impulses are transmitted into the Heart by the Pathetic nerves And from this offensive Contraction of the whole Sensitive Soul and as it were compression of the Animal spirits and subsequent destitution of the Heart it comes that in this sowr passion alwaies the Pulse is made weak and unequal and oftentimes frequent and creeping that cold mixt with a certain pricking heat not easy to be described but sensibly injurious to the vital parts and repugnant to their regular motions is felt within the breast and that even the stomach itself diverted from its office of Concoction nauseateth the meats it had received and strives to reject them by vomit Which often happens upon sight of an odious and abominable object Now all these evil effects of Hate give indisputable evidence that it can never be either gratefull to the mind or beneficial to the motions of life upon which health so nearly depends and this because Hate always hath Sadness for its concomitant and because by diversion of the Animal spirits partly to assist the Imagination partly to move the members for avoidance of the hated object it defrauds the blood of its due supplies of spirits and fewel retards the motion and equal distribution of it and by that means destroies concoction incrassates the humors heaps up melancholy and by degrees brings the whole body to poverty and leanness Moreover sometimes this disagreeable Passion is exalted to Anger whereby the Soul offended with the Evil or wrong she hath suffered at first Contracts herself and by and by with vehemency springs back again to her natural posture of Coextension with the whole body as if the strove to break out into revenge and then it is that the spirits are in a tumultuous manner and impetuously hurried hither and thither now from the brain to the heart then back again from the heart to the brain and so there follow from these contrary motions alternately reciprocated aswell a violent agitation palpitation burning and anxiety of the heart as a diffusion of the blood distension of the veins redness of the face and sparkling of the eyes together with a distorsion of the mouth such as may be observed in great indignation and seems composed of laughter and weeping mixt together grinding of the teeth and other symptoms of Anger and fury It is not then without reason Physicians advise Men to decline this passion as a powerful enemy to health in all but such as are of a cold dull and phlegmatic temperament because it inflames first the spirits then the blood and when violent it puts us into fevers and other acute distempers by accension of choler and confusion of humors And I could furnish you with examples of some whom this short fury hath fired into perpetual madness of others whom it hath fell'd with Apoplexies others whom it hath thrown into Epilepsies rack'd with Convulsions unnerved with Palseys disjoynted with the Gout shook with tremblings and the like but that the books of Physicians are full of them Here before we proceed to other consequent Passions it is fit to make a short reflexion upon Hatred that I may verify what was only hinted in the precedent enumeration of the evil Effects thereof viz. that it is ever accompanied with Sadness Concerning this therefore I reason thus Forasmuch as Evil the proper object of Hate is nothing but a Privation and that we can have no conception thereof without some real Subject wherein we apprehend it to be and that there is in nature nothing real which hath not some goodness in it it follows of necessity that Hatred which withdraws us from some Evil doth at the same time remove us also from some Good to which the same is conjoyn'd And since the Privation of this Good is represented to the Soul as a Defect or want belonging to her it instantly affecteth her with sorrow For Example the Hate that alienateth us from the evil manners of a man with whom formerly we have been acquainted separateth us likewise from his Conversation wherein we might find somthing of Good and to be deprived of that Good is matter of regret and Sorrow So in all other Hatred we may soon observe some cause of Sorrow ¶ To the excitement of Desire in the Soul it is sufficient that she conceive the acquisition of the Good or avoidance of the Evil represented to her as to come to be possible but if she further consider whether it be Easy or Difficult for her to
are observable from their respective Characters or Effects In Hope therefore which we defined to be a gentle and sweet Effusion or Expansion of the Soul towards some good expected to come if we be possessed with an opinion that the thing desired will shortly come to pass I conceive that presently the Animal Spirits which before were imployed as Emissaries to contemplate the image of the object returning toward the Soul give notice of the approach of the guest expected and that thereupon the whole Soul composing herself by expansion to receive and welcome the same sets open all the doors of the Senses to admit more freely all the good belonging thereunto retains the imagination fixt and intent upon the gratefull idea thereof and by copious supplies of spirits dispatched into the nerves of the Heart so invigorates and quickens the pulse thereof that thereby the blood is more briskly sent forth into the outward parts of t he body as it were to meet the expected thing Whence it is that when we are full of Hope we feel a certain inflation both within and without in our whole body together with a glowing but pleasant heat from the blood and spirits universaly diffused But if during this comfortable emotion of the Soul there occurr any suddain cause of Doubt or fear she is instantly checked and coold into an anxious Retraction of herself and a sinking of the spirits so that the motion of the heart becomes weaker and slower and the external parts grow languid and pale For In Fear the Sensitive Soul which was before expansed being surprised with apprehension of approaching Evil and willing to decline it immediately withdraws herself into her retiring room and shrinks up herself into herself at the same time recalling her forces the spirits to her aid and compressing them If the Fear be exalted to the degree of Terror and the Evil seem impendent then at the same time the spirits are suddainly recall'd from the outguards the pores of the skin also are shut up by strong constriction as if the Soul would obstruct and barricado all avenues against her invading enemy whereby the hairs are raised an end and the whole body is put into a Horror or shaking After this if the passion continue the whole army of spirits being put into confusion so that they can not execute their offices the usual succors of Reason fail and the powers of voluntary motion become weak yea sometimes by reason of a resolution of the nerves and sphincters of the gutts and bladder the Excrements themselves are let forth involuntarily From this damp obscuring the Lucid part of the Sensitive Soul there quickly succeeds an Eclipse also of the Vital For the influx of the Animal spirits from the brain into the Cardiac nerves being intermitted the motions of the heart must of necessity be renderd weak and insufficient to maintain with due vigour and celerity the circulation of the blood which therefore stopping and stagnating in the ventricles of the heart causeth fainting and swooning by oppression and sometimes where the passion is hightned into Consternation also suddain death And from this arrest of the blood in the heart by strong constriction of the nerves thereunto belonging we may with reason derive that same anxious oppression and chilling weight which men commonly feel in their breast when they are invaded by violent Fear and upon which the most acute Monsieur Des Cartes seems to have reflected his thoughts when he defined Consternation to be not only a cold but also a perturbation and stupor of the Soul which takes from her the power of resisting evils that she apprehends to be neer This Fear when it excludes all hope of evasion degenerateth into the most cruel of all passions Desperation Which though by exhibiting the thing desired as impossible it wholy extinguish desire which is never carried but to things apprehended as possible yet it so afflicts the Soul that she persevering in her Constriction either through absolute despondency yeelds up herself as overcome and remains half-extinct and entombd in the body or driven into confusion and neglect of all things contracts a deep Melancholy or flyes out into a furious Madness in both cases seeking to put an end to her misery by destroying herself On the contrary when Fear gives place to Hope and that Hope is strong enough to produce Courage thereby to incense the Soul to encounter the difficulties that oppose her in the way to her end in this case she first dilates herself with great vigor and celerity breaking forth as it were into flashes of efforts then instantly diffuseth whole legions of spirits into the nerves and muscles to extend them in order to resistence or striking with all their forces and uniting all her powers into a brave devoir to overcome undauntedly pursues the the conflict Hence it comes that the breast being strongly dilated and contracted alternately the voice is sent forth more sounding and piercing than at other times as if to sound a defiance and charge at once the armes are raised up the hands constringed into fists the head advanced into a posture of daring and contempt of danger the brows contracted and the whole face distorted into an aspect full of terror and threatnings the neck swoln and most other parts distended beyond their usual dimensions All which symptoms evidently arise from a copious and impetuous effusion of Animal spirits from the brain and of blood from the heart into the outward parts ¶ From this concise explication of the motions of the Sensitive Soul the spirits and blood that constitute the passions of Hope and Fear with their dependents Animosity and Desperation the clue of our method leads us to the fifth classis of passions The consideration of good present and belonging to us in particular begets in the Soul that delight which we call Ioy wherein consisteth our possession of that good which the impressions of the brain represent to the Soul as her own First I say that in this delightful commotion doth consist the possession of good because in truth the Soul reaps no other fruit from all the goods she possesseth and when she takes no delight or joy in them it may justly be said she doth no more injoy them than if she did not at all possess them Then I add that the good is such as the impressions made upon the brain represent to the Soul as hers that I may not confound this Joy whereof I now speak and which is a Passion with Joy purely intellectual which enters into the Rational Soul by an action proper to her alone and which we may call a pleasant commotion raised by herself in herself wherein consisteth the possession of good that her intellect represents to her as her own Tho realy so long as the Rational Soul continues conjoyned with the Sensitive it can hardly be but that this intellectual joy will have the other that is a passion for its
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PASSIONS Mihi crede qui nihil agere videntur Majora agunt humana divinaque simul tractant Seneca Epist. 8. In the SAVOY Printed by T. N. for Iames Magnes in Russell-Street near the Piazza in Convent-Garden 1674. EPISTLE PREFATORY To a Person of Honor Friend to the Author 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exercetur ad virtutem in solitudine anima was the the saying of a Bragman or Indian Philosopher to Alexander the the Great and how memorable it is you may perhaps collect from this diversion For the imperfect Discourse I herewith send to you my dear Friend concerning the PASSIONS is the product of my late ten weeks solitude in the Country Where being remote from my Library and wanting conversation with Learned Men I knew not how more innocently to shorten the winter evenings than by spending them in revising some Philosophical papers of my own wherein among other things I had formerly out of the best Authors made certain Collections concerning the divine art of acquiring constant Tranquillity of Mind by Wisedom or the right use of Reason And of this serious Diversion I then made choice both because I well understood the best part of Human Science to be that which teacheth us how to moderate our Affections to the deceiptfull and transitory things of this life and so to regulate our Actions as to reap from them whatever their Events may be the happy fruit of internal Acquiescence and Satisfaction and because my accumulated Misfortunes had at that time reduced me to a necessity of consulting that part of Philosophy about the most effectual Remedies against Discontent In this state and resolution then first I remembred that Nature hath made Man subject to no other real Evil but only pain of the Body all Grief or pain of the Mind though many times more sharp and intollerable being created by our own false Opinion that we stand in want of things that are in truth without the circle of ourselves and therefore not absolutely necessary to our wel-being Then I considered that most commonly false Opinions are occasioned and so exorbitant Desires suggested to us by our Passions upon which all the Good and Evil incident to us in this life seem's to depend as Ioy and Grief are the two points in which all Human actions end For though it be undoubtedly true that the Reasonable Soul hath her intellectual Delights and Disquiets apart such as are proper to her simple and spiritual nature yet is it no less true that those other Delights and Disquiets that are common to her with the Body depend intirely upon the Affections Which when regular that is moderated and directed by reason are indeed of good use to the Soul in that they serve to incite her to desire such objects which she well know's to be pleasant and beneficial to her and to persist in that desire but when irregular by representing as realy good things that are so only in apparence provoke her to erroneous Desires and in persuit of them to Actions also repugnant to the dictates of right Reason and consequently to peace and tranquility of Mind From these Cogitations it was not difficult for me to infer that the whole art of attaining unto that internal serenity after which I was seeking consisteth principaly in Directing our Desires aright that is to things which we clearly and distinctly know to be realy Good and that the only way so to direct our Desires is to imploy our Understanding or Faculty of Discerning which God hath to that end given us strictly and attentively to examine and consider the goodness of things recommended to us by our Passions before we determin our Will to affect and persue them For most certain it is that as our faculty of Discerning that is our Intellect cannot naturaly tend to falsity so neither can our faculty of Assenting that is our Will be deceived when it is determined only upon objects which we clearly and distinctly understand and where our Will is not misplaced there can be no just cause of Perturbation of mind Being soon convinced of this no less evident than important verity in the next place I considered that if our inordinate Affections be the bitter fountain from whence the greatest part of if not all our practical Errors and by consequence most of the Evils we suffer flow and if as the diseases of the Body so likewise those of the Mind may be more easily cured when their nature and causes are understood then would it be requisite for me first to inquire as far as I should be able into the nature causes motions c. of the Passions before I proceeded further in my research after the most powerfull Remedies against their Excesses To this inquiry therefore I diligently applied myself both by reading and meditation by Reading that I might recall into my memory what I had long before transcribed out of the books of such Authors who had written judiciously and laudably of the Passions by Meditation that I might examin the weight of what I read by comparing it with what I daily observed within the theatre of my own breast every Man living being naturaly so sensible of the various Commotions hapning in various Passions especialy more violent ones that some have held the knowledge of their nature and causes may be without much of difficulty derived from thence alone without any help from foreign observations And while I proceeded in this course I digested my Collections and private Sentiments into such an order or Method which seem'd to me most convenient aswell to show their genuin succession and mutual dependence as to make the Antecedents support the Consequents and both to illustrate each other reciprocaly I put them also into a dress of Language so plain and familiar as may alone evince my design was to write of this Argument neither as an Orator nor as a Moral Philosopher but only as a Natural one conversant in Pathology and that too more for his own private satisfaction than the instruction of others And thus have I succinctly acquainted you with the Occasion Subject Scope and Stile of the Treatise that accompanieth this Epistle But this Noble Sir is not all whereof I ought to advertise you before you come to open the Treatise itself There remain yet two or three things more which it imports me to offer to your notice as Preparatives against prejudice ONE is that if in the preliminary part of the Discourse where it was necessary for me to investigate the Subjectum Primarium of the Passions I have declared my assent to their opinion who hold that in every individual Man there are two distinct Souls coexistent conjoined and cooperating one only Rational by which he is made a Reasonable creature the other Sensitive by virtue whereof he participateth also of Life and Sense I did so chiefly for these two reasons First it seem'd to me unintelligible how an Agent incorporeal but not infinite
Sensitive Soul hath been borrowed from that elaborate work of our Learned Dr. Willis de Anima Brutorum lately published Which I hold my self bound here ingeniously to acknowledge left otherwise you might justly condemn me as a Plagiary and that I may invite you also to the pleasure of attentively reading that useful Book Wherein I found great part of what I had formerly read of that subject in various Authors so well collected digested and explained that I chose from thence to copy an image of the Sensitive Soul of Man whereupon I was often to reflect my thoughts while I fate to describe the most remarkable of the Passions to which it is liable and this I did the rather because at that time I had by me no other Book of the same subject You are not therefore to look upon the Description of the nature and affections of a Sensitive Soul therein delivered as a supposition newly excogitated and unheard of by former ages For to Men conversant in the Theories of Physiologists concerning that Subject it is well known that all the Ancients were so far from holding the Soul of a Brute to be other than Corporeal that they for the most part taught their Disciples that the Soul of Man was so too except a few of them namely Pythagoras Plato and in some favourable sense Aristotle when he defined the Soul by that enigmatical term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his Sectators Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus when they called it a Harmony True it is indeed they were much divided in their opinions about the Substance or Matter of a Soul some imagining it to be of Fire as Heraclitus Democritus Hipparchus and the Stoicks some conceiving it to be on the contrary of a Watery nature as Hippon and Thales others fancying it to be composed of Water and Earth as Xenophanes others of Earth and Fire as Parmenides others again of all the four Elements as Empedocles and yet notwithstanding they unanimously consented in these points that this Corporeal Soul is divisible composed of particles extremely small subtil and active diffused through or coextens to the whole body wherein it is contained produced at first by generation out of the seed of the parents perpetualy recruited or regenerated out of the purest and most spirituous part of the nourishment subject to Contraction and Expansion in passions and finally dissolved or extinguished by death If you doubt of the truth of what I here say I know not how more easily to convince you than by referring you to the incomparable Gassendus in Lib. 10. Diogen Laert. cap. de natura contexturà que Animae ad mentem Epicuri where you find the same more amply delivered Meanwhile suffer me to recite a pertinent and memorable text of the Lord Verulam's of the Advancement of Learning Book 4. Chap. 3. that now comes into my head The Sensible Soul saith he must needs be granted to be a Corporeal substance attenuated by heat and made invisible I say a thin gentle gale of wind swell'd and blown up from some flamy and and airy nature indued with the softness of aire to receive impression and with the vigour of fire to embrace action nourished partly by an oyly partly by a watery substance spread over the body residing in perfect creatures chiefly in the head running through the nerves refreshed and repaired by the spirituous part of the blood of the arteries as Bernardinus Telesius de rerum natura lib. 5. and his Scholar Augustinus Donius have delivered it And as for the Bipartition of this Sensitive Soul into two principle members as it were or active sourses vix the Fiery part upon which Life depends and the Lucid from whence all the faculties Animal are like so many distinct rayes of light derived I will not affirm it to be very ancient but yet methinks I discern more than a shadow thereof in some lines of the same most acute Lord Bacon de vita morte explicatione canonis quartae which are these Spiritus vitalis omnis sibi continuatur per quosdam canales per quos permeat nec totaliter intercipitur Atque hic Spiritus etiam duplex est alter ramosus tantum permeans per parvos ductus tanquam lineas alter habet etiam cellam ut non tantum sibi continuetur sed etiam congregetur in spatio aliquo cavo in bene magna quantitate pro analogia corporis atque in illa cella est fons rivulorum qui inde deducantur Ea cella praecipue est in ventriculis cerebri qui in animalibus magis ignobilioribus angusti sunt adeo ut videantur spiritus per universum corpus fusi potius quam cellulati ut cernere est in Serpentibus Anguillis Muscis quorum singulae portiones abscissae moventur diu etiam Aves diutius capitibus avulsis subsultant quoniam parva habeant capita parvas cellas At animalia nobiliora ventriculos eos habent ampliores maximè omnium Homo Alterum discrimen inter spiritus est quod spiritus Vitalis nonnullam habeat incensionem atque sit tanquam aura composita ex flamma aere quemadmodum succi animalium habeant oleum aquam At illa incensio peculiares praebet motus facultates Etenim fumus inflammabilis etiam ante flammam conceptam calidus est tenuis mobilis tamen alia res est postquam facta sit flamma at incensio spirituum vitalium multis partibus lenior est quà m mollissima flamma ex spiritu vini aut alias atque insuper mixta est magna ex parte cum substantia aerea ut sit flammeae aereae naturae mysterium This place of that Prince of Modern Philosophers the Lord St. Albans conjoyned to that other of his immediately precedent seems to me to contain a pourtraiture of the Sensitive Soul drawn indeed as in perspective in colours somwhat faint and not accurately ground yet with good judgment and bold strokes of the pencill such as give it no obscure resemblance of the original And if you Sir please to compare it with the more ample description of the same Sensitive Soul lately set forth by Dr. Willis it will not be difficult to you to observe in how many things they agree ¶ The THIRD and last thing whereof I am here to advertise you is that in the description of many of the Passions likewise I have interwoven some threds taken from the webbs of those three excellent Men Gassendus Des Cartes and our Mr. Hobbes who have all written most judiciously of that obstruse theme Nor will I otherwise excuse myself for being so liberal to you of what I owe to the bounty of those richer Wits than by reciting what your beloved Seneca said to his dear Lucilius in defense of his adopting for his own so many wise and memorable sentences of his and our Oracle Epicurus adhuc de alieno liberalis sum Quare autem alienum dixi
quicquid benè dictum est ab ullo meum est Epist. 16. I will only add as a reason of my so frank communication of these unpolished papers to you who are my Lucilius what the same Latin Stoic most affectionately pâ—ofessed to his on the like occasion Ego vero cupio ista omnia in te transfundere in hoc gaudeo aliquid discere ut doceam Nec me ulla res delectabit licet eximia sit salutaris quam mihi uni sciturus sim. Si cum hac exceptione detur Sapientia ut illam inclusam teneam nec enunciem rejiciam Epist. 6. ¶ INDEX OF THE CONTENTS SECTION I. INtroduction Page 2. SECT II. Article 1 WHat kind of Substance a Sensitive Soul may be conceived to be pag. 5. 2. Two Reasons of that Supposition p. 6. 3. Second Supposition that the substance of a Sensitive Soul is fiery p. 9. 4. Because Life is seated principaly in the blood and can no more than fire itself subsiâ—t without aliment and ventilation p. 9. 5. And because a Sensitive Soul seems to be first formed of the most Spirituous particles of the same seminal matter whereof the body itself is made p. 12. 6. A Sensitive Soul imagined to be also of the same figure with the body it animates p. 13. 7. That the Existence of a Sensitive Soul dâ—th â—s that of flame depend intirely upon motion p. 14. 8. That the first Operation of a Sensitive Soul is the Formation of the body according to the modell preordained by nature p. 16. 9. Recapitulation of the premises p. 19. 10. The Faculties and Organs of a Sensitive Soul reciprocaly inservient each to other p. 20. 11. A twofold desire or inclination congenial to a Sensitive Soul viz. of Self-preservation and Propagation of her kind p. 22. 12. To what various Mutations and irregular Commotions a Sensitive Soul is subject from her own Passions p. 24. 13. From the temperament and diseases of the body p. 26. 14. From various impressions of external objects and exorbitant motions of the Animal Spirits p. 27. 15. The various Gestures of a Sensitive Soul respective to the impressions of external objects variously affecting her p. 28. 16. An inquiry concerning the Knowledge whereby Brutes are directed in actions voluntary p. 30. 17. The Knowledge of Brutes either innate or acquired p. 39. 18. That Brutes are directed only by natural instinct in all actions conducing either to their own preservation or to the propagation of their species not by Reason p. 41. 19. Nor Material Necessity p. 43. SECT III. 1. THe Excellency of a Rational Soul Pag. 46. 2. Manifest from her proper Objects p. 47. 3. And Acts. p. 48. 4. Life and Sense depend not on the Rational Soul of Man and p. 51. 5. Therefore he seems to have also a Sensitive Soul p. 53. 6. The same inferred from the civil war betwixt the Rational and Sensitive Souls p. 54. 7. The Causes of that war p. 55. 8. Wherein somtimes the Sensitive Appetite prevails and p. 57. 9. Somtimes the Rational p. 59. 10. That the Rational Soul is created immediately by God p. 60 11. The Resemblance betwixt Father and Son ascribed to the Sensitive Soul p. 61. 12. The Rational Soul seated in that part of the brain which serves to Imagination and p. 61. 13. There connexed to the Sensitive by the will of her Creator p. 64. 14. Where the manner how she judges of the images of things formed in the Imagination seems to be inexplicable p. 65. SECT IV. Of the Passions of the Mind in general 1. A Twofold state of the Sensitive Soul viz. of Tranquility and p. 68. 2. Of Perturbation p. 69. 3. The first most observable in sleep and when objects appear indifferent p. 70. 4. The other manifest in all Passions ibidem 5. That in the state of Perturbation the Sensisitive Soul varieth her Gestures by Contraction or Expansion p. 72. 6. We are not moved to Passion by Good or Evil but only when we conceive ourselves particularly concerned therein p. 73. 7. All Passions distinguished into Physical Metaphysical and Moral p. 74. 8. What are Passions Physical p. 75. 9. What Metaphysical p. 77. 10. And what Moral p. 81. 11. All Passions referred to Pleasure or Pain and p. 82. 12. All their Motions to Contraction and Effusion p. 83. 13. Wherein consist Pleasure and Displeasure of Sense p. 83. 14. Rehearsal of the heads handled in this Section p. 85. SECT V. Of the Passions in particular 1. WHy Men have not been able to observe all Passions incident to the Sensitive Soul p. 85. 2. The Passions best distinguished by having respect to the differences of Time p. 86. 3. Admiration p. 87. 4. Which causeth no Commotion in the heart and blood and p. 89. 5. Yet is dangerous when immoderate p. 90. 6. Estimation and Contempt p. 91. 7. Both Consequents of Admiration p. 92. 8. No just cause of Self-esteem but the right use our free will p. 92. 9. Pride p. 93. 10. Humility virtuous and p. 90. 11. Vicious or Dejection of Spirit p. 96. 12. Shame and Impudence p. 97. 13. That Pride and its contrary Abjectness of Spirit are not only Vices but Passions also p. 99. 14. Love and Hatred p. 100. 15. Defined p. 101. 16. Love not well distinguished into Benevolence and Concupiscence p. 101. 17. But by the various degrees of Estimation p. 103. 18. That there are not so many distinct sorts of Love as of Objects to excite it p. 104 19. Hatred less various than Love p. 106. 20. Desire alwayes a consequent of Love but p. 106. 21. Not alwaies a Concomitant of it p. 106. 22. The Motions of the Soul and Spirits in Love and their Symptomes p. 107. 23. The Motions of the Soul and Spirits in Desire p. 109. 24. The Motions of the spirits and blood in Hatred p. 111. 25. Hate alwaies accompanyed with Sadness p. 114. 26. Hope and Fear p. 115. 27. Pusillanimity and Courage p. 116 28. Emulation a sort of Magnanimity p. 117. 29. Confidence and Despair p. 117. 30. Doubting p. 118. 31. Remorse and Acquiescence p. 119. 32. The Motions of the Soul and Spirits in Hope p. 121. 33. The Motions of the Soul and spirits in Fear and p. 122. 34. In Desperation p. 124. 35. Ioy. p. 126. 36. The various Degrees of Ioy and their Names p. 127. 37. The various Degrees of Grief and their distinct Appellations p. 127. 38. Envy and Pity p. 128. 39. Generous Men most inclined to Commiseration and why p. 129. 40. Commiseration a species of Grief mixed with Benevolence p. 131. 41. Envy a sort of Grief mixed with Hate p. 131. 42. Acquiescence of mind a kind of Joy p. 132. 43. Repentance a species of Grief but allayd with a touch of Joy p. 133. 44. Favour p. 134. 45. Gratitude p. 135. 46. Indignation p. 136. 47. Anger p. 137. 48. Two sorts of Anger one Harmless the other Revengeful p. 138. 49. Glory and
platform or model preordained and intimated by secret instinct in all parts sit and commodious for all uses necessary as well to the propagation of the Species for still Nature doth though the Soul it self may not aim at Eternity as to the conservation of the individual For which uses she is furnished with many and various Faculties or Powers all which she duly exerciseth according to the various instincts and intimate suggestions of her Governess Nature in acts of several sorts though all performed in almost one and the same manner and as it were by the conduct of Fate or eternal decree of Divinity congenial to her very Essence To enumerate and particularly recount all the natural Faculties with which the Souls of Brutes are endowed all the various Habits resulting from practise and long exercise of those Faculties is neither pertinent to my present institute nor easy to be done because of their almost infinite diversity respective to the immense diversity of kinds of sensitive creatures For as some Animals are of a more others of a less perfect order and as they are diversly configurated according to the several places in this great Theatre of the World in which they are consigned to live and act their several parts so we see their Souls are by the wise bounty of the Creator instructed with diverse inclinations faculties and appeties directive to the ends to which they were predestined In a word since there ought to be an exact proportion and congruity betwixt every organical Body and the Soul that informs and animates it and that for that reason Nature seems to have diversified and distinguished the various Kinds of Brute Animals by an equal diversity of their bodily structures and configurations easily discernable by the sight we may even from thence alone conclude that their Corporeal Souls likewise are no less various and endowed with Faculties and Proprieties answerably different Whoever then shall attempt to enrich Philosophy with a perfect Catalogue of these so different Faculties and Proprieties observable among Brutal Souls will find himself obliged first to compose a better Natural History of all sorts of Animals than any we yet have and then to deliver also a true and full account of the various Structures of their Bodies from a Comparative Anatome of them A work indeed most desirable and highly delightful but equally difficult and laborious nor to be performed I fear by any single hand But were it much less difficult sure I am you know my incapacity too well ever to expect it from mine and what hath been already said by me here in the general touching the nature of a Sensitive Soul is enough to render my First Preliminary probable For from thence it may without contradiction to either reason or observations Anatomical be conceived 1 in what manner the Soul of a Brute may be at first produced by accension of the most spirituous particles of the Seminal humor in the womb of the Parent as one flame is kindled by another 2 how the same Soul then form's the Organical Body out of the grosser parts of the same seed after the figure or type predesign'd by the Divine Protoplast at the Creation whose wisdom directs and regulates it in that admirable work 3 How it afterwards comes to conserve expand and augment itself as the dimensions of the body are by degrees enlarged until it arrive at its perfection or standard of growth by accension of more and more of the inflammable parts of the Nourishment dayly renewed and converted into laudable blood as the flame of a lamp is kept alive by a perpetual accension of fresh parts of oyl 4 How the Duration of the Body depends intirely upon the subsistence or perpetual renovation or regeneration of the Soul and how immediately upon the Souls Extinction the body submits to corruption no otherwise than as Wine dyes and degenerates into a Vappa so soon as the spirit that preserv'd it in vigour and generosity is evaporated or suppress'd Now to the end this Corporeal Soul or invisible Flame may the better thus animate the Body and actuate it to sense and voluntary motion Nature hath most wisely instituted that her Organs and Faculties should all of them be reciprocaly inservient or official each to other in their acts and operations For as out of the grosser parts of the Nutritive juice prepared and elaborate in the Stomach and other instruments of concoction the decays of the solid parts of the Body are daily repaired so are the decays of the Soul itself likewise repaired out of the more subtile and spirituous particles of the same juice which continualy brought afresh to the blood as oyl to a Lamp and kindled therein restore both the Flame and Light of the Soul which would otherwise quickly be consumed and perish More expresly while the purer part of the Nutritive liquor feeds and renews the Lamp of life or flame of the blood the most active and most spirituous particles discharged from that flame are carried up and insinuated into the Brain and there recruite or regenerate the other part of the Soul viz. the Sensitive And so the conversion of Chyle into blood is an operation not only consequent to but in some sort also dependent upon the conversion of meat and drink into Chyle and on the other side the Animal faculty gratefully requites the good offices of the Vital and both as amply recompense the services of the faculty of Chylification in that the Animal spirit confers the pulsific power by which the heart and arteries drive the current of the blood in a perpetual round for the reaccension of its inflammable parts and the Bowels ordaind for concoction of the aliment at the same time borrow as their enlivening heat from the flame of the blood so their virtue both motive and sensitive from the constant afflux of Animal spirits without out which they cannot duely do their offices Thus you see the brain is beholden to the heart both to the stomach and reciprocally the stomach is assisted by them and all parts conspire by contributary helps to continue the Soul in its subsistence as that again acts perpetualy to the conversation of herself and them To this the Sensitive Soul or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle not improperly calls it is strictly obliged by a twofold inclination or desire innate or congenial to her One is that of self-preservation which she endeavours constantly to effect by being sollicitous for convenient food out of whose inflammable parts actually incensed she may every minute redintegrate her own flame The other that of Propagating her Species or producing by the same way of accension other Sensitive Souls of the same kind that so by an uninterrupted succession of her like she may attain to that perpetuity which is denied to her single or individual self And to this end she carefully selects out of her stock of aliment matter fit for generation stores it up
and confused with delusory whimzies as it too frequently happens to Men in Hypochondriacal Melancholy and madness and likewise in drunken fits And as for the various Gestures of the Soul by which respectively to the various impressions of sensible objects she expresseth one while Gladness and Pleasure another Aversion and Offence it is worthy our observation that sometimes she is allured outwardly into the organ of some one of the senses and that she occasionaly crowds herself into the Eye Ear Palate or other instrument of sense there more neerly to approach and entertain the pleasing object somtimes on the contrary to avoid an Evil she apprehends and decline an encontre with an ingratefull object she retreats inwardly and leaving her watches shrinks up herself as if she labourd to hide her head from the danger threatned So that we can scarcely perceive or imagine any thing without disquiet and commotion and at the apprehension of almost any object whatsoever the whole Soul is moved and put into a trembling and the substance of it variously agitated as a field of corn is waved to and fro by contrary gusts of winds Nor do these agitations especially if they be any whit violent stop at the Sensitive part of the Soul or spirits Animal which I imagine to make a kind of lucid Fluidum subject to Undulations or waving motions throughout upon either external or internal impulses but as waves rowl on till they arrive at the shore are carried on by an Undulating motion even to the Vital part glowing in the blood and impelling the flame thereof hither and thither make it to burn unequaly For so soon as an object is either by the sense or by the Memory represented to the Imagination under th' apparence of Good or Evil in the very same instant it affects and commoves the Animal Spirits destined to maintain the Pulse of the heart and by their influx causing the heart to be variously contracted or dilated consequently renders the motion and accension of the blood variously irregular and unequal And thus you see in what manner the two parts of the Sensitive Soul the Vital flame and the Animal spirits reciprocally affect each other with their accidental alterations But this you may understand more clearly and fully from the following Theory of the Passions where we shall enquire into the reasons and motions of them more particularly Mean while I find my self in this place arrested by a certain mighty Difficulty which though perhaps I shall not be able to overcome ought nevertheless to be attempted not only for its own grand importance but because without some plausible Explication of it at least all our precedent speculations concerning the nature and proprieties of a Sensitive Soul will fall to the ground as an arch that wants a key or middle-stone to support all the rest It is concerning the Knowledge of Brutes by which they are directed in actions voluntary For supposing all we have hitherto been discoursing of the Origin Substance Subsistence Parts Faculties Inclinations Passions and Alterations of a Corporeal Soul to be true and evident which is more than I dare assume yet doth it not from thence appear what such a Soul can by her own proper virtue do more than a Machine artificialy fram'd and put into motion To speak more plainly tho it be granted that first th' impression made by an external object upon the instrument of sense doth by impelling the Animal Spirits inwards and by disposing them into a certain peculiar figure or mode as the Cartesians speak cause the act of Sensation or simple Perception and that then the same spirits rebounding as it were by a reflex undulation outward from the brain into the nerves and muscles produce local motions granting this I say yet still we are to seek How this Soul or any one part of it comes to be conscious of Sensation or how it can by a reflex act as the Schools phrase it perceive that it doth perceive and according to that perception is impell'd to diverse acts directed to an appetite of this or that good and somtimes in prosecution of the good desired to perform actions that seem to be the results of counsel and deliberation such as are daily observed to be done by several sorts of Beasts as well wild as domestic In Man indeed it seems not difficult to conceive that the Rational Soul as president of all thâ—inferiour faculties and constantly speculating the impressions or images represented to her by the Sensitive as by a mirrour doth first form to herself conceptions and notions correspondent to their nature and then proceed to acts of reason judgement and will But as for Brutes that are irrational in what manner the perception distinction appetite memory of objects and other acts resulting from an inferior kind of reason are in them performd this I confess is more than I can yet understand Some there are I know who rather then acknowledge their insufficiency to solve this Problem have attributed to Brutes also Souls immaterial and subsistent after separation from their bodies But these considered not that the Soul of a Brute however docil and apprehensive and using organs in their structure very little if at all different from those in the head of Man can yet have no capacity of Arts and Sciences nor raise it self up to any objects or acts but what are Material and that by consequence the same is different from and inferiour to the Rational Soul of Man and material So that instead of solving the Doubt by teaching us how from a certain Modification of subtil matter there may result such Power which residing in the brain of a Brute may there receive without confusion all impressions or images brought in by the Senses distinctly speculate judge and know them and then raise appetites and imploy the other faculties in acts respective to that knowledge and to those appetites instead of this I say they have entangled themselves in an absurd Error ascribing to a thing meerly material a capacity of knowing objects immaterial and performing actions proper only to immaterial Beings We are therefore to search for this Power of a Sensitive Soul by which she is conscious of her own perception only in Matter in a peculiar manner so or so disposed or modified But in what matter this of the Soul or that of the Body Truely if you shall distinctly examine either the Soul or the Body of a Brute as not conjoyned and united into one Compositum you will have a hard task of it to find in either of them or indeed in any other material subject whatever any thing to which you may reasonably attribute such an Energetic and self-moving Power But if you consider the whole Brute as a Body animated and by divine art of an infinite wisdom designed framed and qualified for certain ends and uses then you may safely conclude that a Brute is by the law of the Creation or institute of Almighty
God so comparated as that from Soul and body united such a confluence of Faculties should result as are necessary to the ends and uses for which it was made Do but convert your thoughts awhile upon Mechanic Engines and seriously contemplate the motions powers and effects of them They are all composed indeed of gross solid and ponderous Materials and yet such is the design contrivance and artifice of their various parts as that from the figures and motions of them there result certain and constant operations answerable to the intent of the Artist and far transcending the forces of their divided ingredients Before the invention of Clocks and Watches who could expect that of iron and brass dull and heavy metalls a machine should be framed which consisting of a few wheels endented and a spring regularly disposed should in its motions rival the celestial orbs and without the help or direction of any external Mover by repeted revolutions measure the successive spaces of time even to minutes and seconds as exactly almost as the diurnal revolutions of the Terrestrial globe itself and yet now such Machins are commonly made even by some Blacksmiths and mens admiration of their pretty artifice long since ceased If then in vulgar Mechanics the contrivance and advantagious disposition of matter be more noble and efficacious than matter itself certainly in a Living Creature in a Body animate the Powers emergent from a conspiracy and cooperation of so many so various organs and all so admirably formed ought to be acknowledged incomparably more noble and more Energetic If the art of Man weak and ignorant Man can give to bodies of themselves weighty sluggish and unactive figure connexion and motion fit to produce effects beyond the capacity of their single natures what ought we to think of the divine art of the Creator whose Power is infinite because his wisedom is so Could not He think you who by the voice of his Will call'd the World out of Chaos and made so many myriads of different Beings out of one and the same universal matter could not He when He created Brutes so fashion and organize the various parts and members of their Bodies thereto so adjust the finer and more active contexture of their spirituous Souls and impress such motions upon them as that from the union and cooperation of both a Syndrome or conspiracy of Faculties or Powers should arise by which they might be qualified and inabled to live move and act respectively to the proper uses and ends of their Creation Undoubtedly He could and t is part of my belief that He did Nor do I more wonder at the Knowledge of Beasts by which they are directed in the election of objects and in the prosecution or avoidance of them than I do at their simple Perception of them by their outward senses since I conceive the one to be as much Mechanical as the other though perhaps the reason of the one is of more difficult explication than that of the other When you hear the Musick of a Church Organ is it not as pleasant to your mind as the Musick is to your ear to consider how so many grateful notes and consonances that compose the charming Harmony do all arise only from wind blown into a set of pipes gradualy different in length and bore and successively let into them by the apertures of their valves and do you not then observe the Effect of this so artificial instrument highly to excell both the Materials of it and the hand of the Organist that plaies upon it the like Harmony you have perhaps somtimes heard from a Musical Water-work as the vulgar calls it an Organ that plaied of itself without the hands of a Musician to press the jacks meerly by the force of a stream of Water opening and shuting the valves alternately and in an order predesign'd to produce the harmonical sounds consonances and modes requisite to the composition to which it had been set Now to the first of these Organs you may compare a Man in whom the Rational Soul seems to perform the office of the Organist while governing and directing the Animal Spirits in all their motions she disposeth and ordereth all Faculties of the inferior or Sensitive Soul according to her will and pleasure and so makes a kind of Harmony of Reason Sense and Motion And to the Other or Hydraulic Organ you may compare a Brute whose Sensitive Soul being scarcely moderatrix of of herself and her Faculties doth indeed in order to certain ends necessary to her nature perform many trains of actions but such as are like the various parts of an Harmonical Composition regularly prescribed as the notes of a Tune are prickd down by the law of her creation and determined for the most part to the same thing viz. the Conservation of herself So that she seems to produce an Harmony of Life Sense and Motion But this Analogy seems to be much greater in Brutes of the lowest order such upon whose Souls or natures there are not many Types or Notes of actions to be done by them imprinted and which according to that common saying of the Schools non tam agunt quà m aguntur act rather by necessary impulse or constraint than freely and of their own accord than in more perfect Animals whose actions are ordained to more and more considerable uses and upon whose Souls therefore more original lessons are as it were prick'd down and to which we cannot justly deny a power of both varying those innate prints and compounding them one with another occasionaly Which Power seems to be radicated in the Corporeal Soul by nature so constituted as to be knowing and active in some certain things necessary to it and capable also of being afterward taught by various accidents usually affecting it both to know other things and to do far more and more intricate actions All the Knowledge therefore these more perfect Brutes are observed to have must be either Innate or Adventitious The Former is commonly nam'd Natural Instinct which being by the Omnipotent Creator in the very act of their Formation infused and as an indelible Character impress'd upon their very principles or natures both urges them to and directs them in certain actions necessary to the prorogation of their life and to the propagation of their kind The Other is by little and little acquired by the daily perception of new objects by imitation by experience by mans teaching and by some other waies and in some Brutes is advanced to a higher degree than in others Nevertheless this same acquired cognition and Cunning also how great soever doth in some of them depend altogether upon instinct natural and the frequent use of it Here it would not perhaps be very difficult for me to recount what sorts of actions done by more perfect Beasts are referrible to their Congenite Knowledge alone what to their acquired alone and what to a combination of both I could also shew how their
and actuate the body betwixt whose nature and her own there is great disparity 2 As for that nice and amusing doctrine of the School-men that in Man the Sensitive Soul is eminently contained in and to use their very term as it were absorpt by the Rational so that what is a Soul in Brutes becomes a mere Power or quality in Man this I think as many other of their superfine distinctions doe sounds like nothing put into hard words For how can it be imagined possible the eternal law of nature should be so far violated as that a substance should be changed into an accident that the Sensitive Soul which is Corporeal and extense and which they themselves allow to be actually existent in the body before the infusion of the Rational should upon accession of the Rational lose its former essence and degenerate into a naked Quality This is I profess a Mystery much above my comprehension 3 If it be affirmed that the Rational Soul doth at her entrance into the body introduce life also and sense and so there is no need of any other principle of life and sense where she is then must it be granted that Man doth not generate a Man animated or endowed with life and sense but only an inform body or rude mass of flesh And how absurd that would be I leave to your judgement These Reasons discovering the improbability of the first Assumption what can remain to hinder us from embracing the OTHER viz. that there are in every individual Man two distinct Souls coexistent and conjoin'd one by which he is made a Reasonable creature another by which he becomes also a living and Sensitive one Especially since the truth of this seems sufficiently evident even from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or civil war too frequently hapning betwixt these twins which every Man sometimes feels in his own breast and whereof the holy Apostle himself so sadly complain'd For this intestine War seeing it cannot arise from one and the same thing possessed with affections mutually repugnant and inclining us two contrary waies at once argues a Duumvirate of Rulers reciprocaly clashing and contending for superiority and such too that are as remote in their natures as different in the modes of their subsistence Upon this War depend all the Passions by which the restless Mind of Man is so variously and many times also violently agitated to his almost perpetual disquiet and vexation and upon the success of it depends all the happiness or misery of not only his present life but that which is to come To enquire therefore awhile into the grounds and reasons of this fatal discord will be neither loss of time nor digression from our purpose That Man then is endowed as with two distinct faculties of Knowing viz. Vnderstanding and Imagination that proper to his Rational this to his Sensitive soul so likewise with a twofold Appetite viz. Will which proceeding from his Intellect is immediate attendant of the Rational soul and appetite Sensitive which cohering to the Imagination is as it were the factor or procurer to the Corporeal Soul is the common doctrine of Plato and Aristotle to this day read and asserted in the Schools nor ought it to be rejected But then it must not be so understood as if the Rational soul herself which seems to be immaterial and consequently exempt from passion were upon every appulse of good or evil objects subject to all the turbulent affections of desire or aversation for this would be manifestly repugnant to the excellency of her spiritual nature and inconsistent with her dignity and superintendency over the inferiour powers Affections she hath indeed of her own such as are competent and proper to her semidivine Essence It is not to be doubted but that in the contemplation of true and good and chiefly of what is supremely both true and good the Deity as likewise in works of beneficence in the cognition of things by their causes in the exercises of her habits aswell the contemplative as the practical and in all other her proper acts the Reasonable Soul feels in herself a very great Complacency as on the contrary the want of these doth affect her with as great Displeasure Nor is it to be doubted but our love of God and all other real goods and our detestation of vices and vicious Men as also all other pure and simple affects arising and continuing without perturbation or disquiet belong only to the Reasonable Soul which to use the elegant simile of Plato seated in a higher sphere of impassibility like the top of mount Olympus enjoys perpetual serenity looking down the while upon all tumults commotions and disorders hapning in the inferior part of man as that doth upon the clouds winds thunders and other tempests raised in the air below it But as for all vehement affections or perturbations of the Mind by which it is usualy commoved and inclined to this or that side for prosecution of good or avoidance of evil these certainly ought all to be ascribed to the Corporeal Soul and seem to have their original in the seat of th' Imagination probably the middle of the brain Nevertheless for that the Intellect as it reviews all Phantasms formed by imagination and at pleasure regulates and disposes them so it not only perceives all concupiscences and tempests of passions used to be stirr'd up in the imagination but also while it freely exerciseth its native power and jurisdiction moderates governs and gives law to them for these reasons when the Rational Soul approves some and rejects others raiseth some and composes others of those passions and directs them to right ends she may also be said by such her dictates to exercise acts of Will as Arbiter and to will or nill those things which the Sensitive Appetite desires or abhors by her permission or command But yet this empire of the Rational Soul is not so absolute over the Sensitive when this proceeds to Appetite as when it is imployed about the discernment and Knowledge of sensible objects For the Sensitive being much neerer allied to the body and immediate Guardian thereof is by that affinity and relation obliged to addict itself altogether to the gratification welfare and conservation of the same And that this province may be more gratefull and agreeable to so delicate a Governess she is continualy courted and presented by all the Senses with variety of blandishments and tempting delights So that charmed by those powerful enchantments of sensible objects and intirely taken up with care of the body and in that respect prone to pursue pleasures she too often proves deaf to the voice of Reason advising the contrary and refuses to be diverted from her sensual to nobler affections Yea somtimes grown weary of subjection she takes occasion to cast off her yoke of allegiance and like a proud and insolent Rebell aspires to unbounded license and dominion And then then it is we feel those Twins
being interrupted is forced to undergo irregular floods and ebbs and other violent fluctuations but the Animal spirits also impelled to and fro in a tumultuous manner cause great disorders in the functions of sense and motion yea more by their exorbitant manner of influx into the nerves of the Heart and Lungs they move them irregularly and so contribute to render the course of the blood yet more unequal Nor doth the tempest stop here it extends sometimes also to other Humors of the body to the solid parts and members of it and even to the discomposure of the Reasonable Soul her self The Tranquillity of the Sensitive Soul is easily observable in sleep when the spirits are bound up or at least at rest and very often also when we are awake namely whensoever the objects affecting the sense or created in the imagination appear to import neither good nor evil to us and we are no further concerned than barely to apprehend and know them For then they smoothly and calmly slide into the common sensory and imagination and soon pass away without any the least disquiet or commotion of the appetite The Perturbation of it is as easily manifest in all the passions which are the consequents of desire or of aversation For when any object is represented under the apparence of good or evil to us in particular instantly the Sensitive Soul is moved to imbrace or avoid it and imployes not only the Animal Spirits her Emissaries but the blood also and other humors universally diffused through the body and even the solid parts too as instruments to effect her design More plainly when the Imagination conceives any thing to be embraced as good or avoided as evil presently by the spirits residing in the brain and ranged as it were into order the Appetite is formed and then the impression being transmitted to the Heart according as that is contracted or dilated the blood is impelled and forced to various fluctuations and irregular motions and thence the Appetite being by instinct transmitted to the nerves ordained for that use they cause motions of the solid parts respective thereunto And this we may conjecture to be the order of motions excited successively in the phantasy spirits blood and solid parts in every Passion of the mind of what sort soever Nor can it indeed sink into my dull head by what other means of mutual intercourse besides such a quick transmission of spirits first from the brain into the Praecordia and thence back again to the brain by nerves to that end extended betwixt those sources of life and sense the great and speedy commerce in all passions observed to be maintained between them can be effected But however this admirable Commerce may be otherwise explained it is lawful for us us to conceive that the Sensitive Soul when put into this state of perturbation doth strangely vary her Postures according to the diversity of motions caused in her and though that diversity be very great yet that in all perturbations whatever she is more or less amplified so as to swell beyond her ordinary bounds or more or less contracted within her self so as to be less extense or diffused than usually she is at other times in her state of tranquillity as will be exemplified in all the passions we design particularly to describe Mean while it is observable that sometimes she being affected with joy or pride and as it were exulting above measure doth advance and expand her self as if she strove to be greater and to stretch her grandure beyond the narrow limits of the body Whereupon the Animal Spirits being respectively commoved in the brain enlarge the sphere of their irradiation and by a more abundant influx vigorously agitate the Praecordia or vital parts so forcing the blood to flow more copiously into all parts and to diffuse it self more freely and speedily through the whole body On the contrary sometimes being surprised with grief or fear she contracts her self into a narrower compass so that shrunk up to a scantling less than her usual circuit of emanation she becomes of too small a size vigorously to actuate the body as she ought Whence the Animal faculties drooping as it were perform their actions either slowly and weakly or perversly and the Praecordia wanting their due influx of spirits almost flagg suffering the blood to remain in their conduits longer than it ought even to danger of stagnation and consequently of sudden death These two contrary Motions therefore of Contraction and Expansion I suppose to be the two General ones to which all the various Postures of the Sensitive Soul when she is perturbed may be commodiously referr'd it seeming to me considering her to be exactly like a Flame and obnoxious to the like accidental mutations that she is not naturally capable of other besides these and that how great soever the variety of such her Mutations may be in the vast diversity of Passions yet they are all but several degrees and divers modes of either her Extension or Contraction This being then supposed I proceed to the first and General Causes of all Passions Where I observe first what was only hinted a little afore that it is not the simple representation of good or evil in any object how great soever it be that is sufficient to raise Commotion in the sensitive Soul for we usualy without perturbation behold the prosperous or adverse events befalling other Men no waies related to us and therefore it is further required to the moving our affections that the good or evil apprehended be by us conceived to concern ourselves in particular or our Friends at least and near relations who in this case are part of our selves Secondly that even that good or evil wherein a Man conceives himself to be concern'd is not always apprehended by him under one and the same ration or aspect but variously aswell in respect of the object itself as of the Subject to which it doth more peculiarly and immediately appertain Of the divers rations under which one and the same object good or evil may be apprehended by one and the same Man respectively to the various circumstances thereof we shall more opportunely speak anon And as for those that respect the Subject or Man apprehending it is worthy our serious remark That all Good or Evil represented to Man doth concern the Sensitive Soul either as she is distinct from the body and abstract from all relation or as she is intimately conjoyn'd to the body and interressed therein or finally as she is subordinate to the Rational Soul For though every Affect or Passion be founded in the Corporeal Soul yet it always respects the good or evil of one or other of these three subjects and is first raised on the behalf of this that or the other Wherefore according to this triple relation of the Sensitive Soul all Passions incident thereto may be said to be either Physical or Metaphysical or
the propriety of those expressions in scripture which seem to ascribe all our sacred passions principaly to the heart 3. And as for Passions Moral I refer to their classis all those that are excited in the Sensitive Soul upon her perception of such good or evil objects as concern her confederate the Body with which she is most intimately conjoynd and upon whose welfare her safety doth necessarily depend Concerning these in general it is remarkable that though the Sensitive Soul hath secret loves and aversations of her own commonly called as we have already said Sympathies and Antipathies and though she owes obedience to the commands and dictates of her superior the Rational Soul yet being by so strict a ligue and as it were a conjugal union affianced to the body she is strongly inclined to prefer the conservation of that her favorite to all other relations and accordingly to gratify and indulge it even in those things that are prohibited by religion and reason So that no wonder if she be affected with pleasure or pain and with all other passions referible to them for the prosperous or adverse state of the body To make this our entrance into the spring-head of all Passions somwhat more lightsome we are here to recount two fundamental verities both of so conspicuous evidence I do not remember I ever heard them contradicted One is that all Affects which external objects can possibly excite in us in respect of the various modes or manners by which they fall under our notice may be commodiously referred to two general heads namely Pleasure and Pain For whatever is perceived by the Senses appears to the Soul to be Good or Evil gratefull or offensive and whatever is offered to her under the apparence of Good or Gratefull instantly causeth some certain Pleasure in her as on the contrary whatever is represented to her as Evil or offensive as quickly raiseth in her some kind of Pain or trouble provided as was before advertised she apprehend herself to be any way concerned in such good or evil So that we cannot but applaud the judgment of Epicurus and Aristotle in constituting but two kinds of Passions namely Pleasure and Pain the one calling them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 voluptatem dolorem the other naming them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 voluptatem molestiam The other is that all the various motions of the spirits and blood or of the Sensitive Soul excited in the various Passions may likewise be conveniently reduced to two general heads namely Contractions and Effusions which our Master Galen I remember terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are referred to Pain and Pleasure Because in Pleasure the Soul dilateth herself as much as she can that is she diffuseth the spirits as her Emissaries to meet and receive the good represented to her and in Pain she on the contrary compresseth or withdraws herself inward that is she recalls the spirits toward herself in avoidance of the Evil apprehended Manifest it is therefore that all Corporeal Passions have their roots grounded in Sense whereof pleasure and pain â—re two opposite affects one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 agreeable and familiar to nature â—he other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alien and offensive And that I may as far as I am able â—xplain wherein pleasure and displeasure of â—â—nce doth consist I take liberty to supâ—ose that at first when an object affects â—he Sensory with soft and smooth touâ—hes or motions such as are consentaâ—eous to the delicate contexture of the â—erves of which the sensory is chiefly composed or to the internal motions of the spirits therein residing it instantly causeth that gratefull sense called delight as on the contrary if the object invade the sensory with asperity or violence such as hurts the tender nerves thereof or hinders the natural motions of the spirits therein then it produceth that ingrateful sense call'd displeasure or pain The impression being thus made by the object upon the Organ of sense and thence by a certain motion of the spirits resembling the waving of water carried on to the brain if it be pleasant it immediately puts the spirits therein reserved into brisker but regular motions conformable to their nature and uses if displeasing it puts them into confusion If the impression be light the motion thereby caused in the brain soon decayeth and vanisheth of itself if strong the motion is continued from the brain down to the breast and the heart and blood participate thereof respectively and so passion instantly succeeds But whether this be the true manner of objects producing pleasure or displeasure of sense or not most evident it is that we have as no conceptions of things without us in the brain so no passions for them in the heart but what have their firsâ— original from Sense Now having in this manner shewn as plainly as I could 1 what Mutations are incident to the Sensitive Soul 2 what are the most considerable Causes of those Mutations 3 what the most remarkable Effects and consequents of them upon the body and mind of Man 4 the Differences of Passions respective to the various relations of the Sensitive Soul to the Rational and to the body 5 that all passions are referible to pleasure or pain 6 that all Motions of the Spirits and blood caused in passions belong to Contraction or Effusion and 7 wherein consist pleasure and displeasure of Sense our next work must be to speak SECT V. Of the Passions in particular NOt of all that are incident to the mind of Man which were extremely difficult if not altogether impossible for me to do For seeing the objects that raise pleasure and displeasure are innumerable and the various waies or manners by which they affect the sense and excite motions in the brain spirits and heart are equaly innumerable even those Philosophers themselves who have with all possible attention of mind laboured to search out the several sorts of Passions have not been able to take notice but of very few nor to give names to all those neither Besides considering of how subtil particles how fluid and easily moveable a substance and how delicate a contexture the Sensitive Soul seems to be composed we may soon conceive her to be subject to greater variety of impressions commotions fluctuations inclinations alterations and perturbations than can possibly be observed and distinguished even by the most curious It may well suffice then to enumerate and describe the most remarkable of her Passions such as like so many lesser streams flow from the two general fountains before mentioned Pleasure and Displeasure of sense or motions begun in the sensory traduced to the brain and continued to the heart and that are of a more simple nature Which that we may perform with more of order and less of obscurity we are to consider that the Passions receiving their most notable diversity from certain circumstances of Time may therefore be most
companion For so soon as our Intellect observes that we possess any good though that good be so far different from all that pertains to the body that it is wholy unimaginable yet presently the Imagination makes some impression in the brain from whence followeth a motion of the Sensitive Soul and of the Spirits that exciteth the passion of Joy Of this so gratefull affection there are divers sorts or to speak more strictly degrees For as various circumstances may intervene and cause the Soul to be more or less affected with her fruition of the good she possesseth so may we distinguish various differences of the passion itself To be more particular as the good she possesseth is great or small unexpected or long desired durable or transitory and as reason moderateth the appetite or suffers it to be unbridled so it comes to pass that the Effusion of the Soul and consequently the pleasure is greater or less permanent or momentary immoderate or temperate c. And hence the kinds of more remiss Joy are call'd Complacency Iucundity Gladness Exhilaration and those of more intens Rejoycing Exsultation Triumph Boasting Transport or Ecstasy Laughter c. By the same reason as the Evil that causeth the opposite passion of Grief is in the present great or little suddain or foreseen long or short and the like so are there excited various kinds or degrees of Trouble or Grief and accordingly the passion is distinguished into Discontent Sollicitude Vexation Sadness Sorrow Affliction Misery Lamentation Weeping and Howling All which belong to Grief which is an ingrateful Languor of the Sensitive Soul wherein alone consisteth the incommodity that hapneth to her from Evil or defect which the impressions made upon the brain represent to her as her own For besides this there is also an Intellectual Sorrow proper to the Rational Soul which is not to be placed in the number of the passions tho for the most part it hath for its adjunct the passion of Sorrow by reason of the most strict conjunction betwixt the two Souls in this life As the Good or Evil present being represented as belonging particularly to ourselves produceth Joy or Grief in us so when Good or Evil is proposed to us as belonging to others we so far concern ourselves therein as to judge them worthy or unworthy of the same If we judge them unworthy of the good that is hapned to them that raiseth Envy in us if we think them not to deserve the Evil that is befallen them then we are affected with Pity or Commiseration which is a species of Sorrow and the contrary to it is Hardness of Heart proceeding either from slowness of imagination for men of dull capacities are generally less apt to pity the calamities of others or from strong opinion of our own exemption from the like sufferings or from that inhuman temper of mind which the Grecians call Misanthropia Hatred of all or most men or finally from despair after long adversity whereby the mind being grown as it were callous or brawny as Seneca expresseth it is apt to conceive that no evil can come to it greater than what it hath been accustomed to undergo On the contrary they are more than others propens to Commiseration who think themselves very weak and obnoxious to adverse fortune because representing to themselves anothers misfortune as possible to happen to themselves also for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man they are easily moved to pity but more out of love of themselves than of others And yet it hath been ever observed that men of the most generous and Heroick spirits such who having by brave resolutions and habitual magnanimity elevated their souls above the power of fortune and so could fear no evil that she could bring upon them have nevertheless been prone to Commiseration when they beheld the infirmity of others and heard their complaints because it is a part of true Generosity to wish well to every one But the Grief of this Heroick Commiseration is not as the other bitter but like that which Tragical cases represented in a Theatre produce it is placed more in the Sense than in the Soul itself which at the same time injoyeth the satisfaction of thinking that she doth her duty in sympathizing with the afflicted And the difference betwixt the Commiseration of the vulgar and that of Generous minds doth chiefly consist in this that the vulgar pittieth the misery of those who complain as thinking the evil they suffer to be very grievous and intollerable but the principal object of generous pity is the imbecillity and impatience of those who complain n because men of great Souls think that no accident can fall upon a man which is not really a less evil than the Pusillanimity of those who cannot endure it with constancy which Seneca intimateth de tranquillitate animâ— cap. 15. where he saith neminem â—â—ebo sientem nam suis lacrymis efficit ne ullis dignus sit and though they hate the vices of men they do hate not their persons but only pity them Manifest it is therefore that in some Commiseration is nothing but imagination of future Calamity to our selves proceeding from the sense of another mans calamity as it is defined by Mr Hobbs in others a species of Grief mixt with Love or Benevolence toward those whom we observe to suffer under some evil which we think they have not deserved as it is defined by Monsieur des Cartes Manifest it is likewise that the contrary passion Envy is a sort of Grief mixt with Hate proceeding from our sense of prosperity in another whom we judge unworthy thereof A passion never excusable but where the Hatred it contain's is against the unjust distribution of the good that is envied not the person that possesseth it or that distributed it But in this corrupt age there are very few so just and generous as to be free from all Hate towards their competitors who have prevented them in the acquisition of a good which is not communicable to many at once and which they had desired to appropriate to themselves though they who have acquired it be equally or more worthy thereof When we reflect our thoughts upon good done by our selves there results to us that internal Satisfaction or Acquiescence of mind which is a species of Ioy calme indeed and serious but incomparably sweet and pleasant because the Cause of it dependeth upon nothing but our selves But then that cause ought to be just that is the good upon which we reflect our cogitations ought to be of great moment otherwise the Satisfaction we fansy to our selves is false and ridiculous serving only to beget pride and absurd arrogancy Which may be specially observed in those who esteem themselves truely religious and pretend to great perfection of Sanctity when in reality they are Superstitious and Hypocrites that is who because they frequent the temple recite
of the left into the Aorta or grand Artery the Diaphragm being by abundance of Animal spirits immitted through so many nerves proceeding from the aforesaid Plexus briskly agitated is by nimble contraction drawn upwards and so making many vibrations doth at once raise up the Lungs and force them to expell the blood out of their vessels into the arteria venosa and to explode the aire out of their pipes into the windpipe and this by frequent contractions of their lax and spongy substance answerable in time and quickness to the vibrations of the Midriff And then because the same Intercostal nerve which communicateth with the nerve of the Diaphragm below is conjoyned above also with the nerves of the jaws and muscles of the face thence it is that the motions of Laughter being once begun in the brest the face also is distorted into gestures or grimasces patheticaly correspondent thereunto And this is the most probable account I am able at present to give of the occasions and motions of passionate Laughter in general nor can I at present think of any more plausible conjecture concerning the reason of the admirable laughter of Ludovicus Vives than this that in him the nerves inservient to the motion of the Midriff might be after such a peculiar manner contrived and framed as easily to cause quick and short reciprocations thereof upon the pleasant affection of his Imagination by the grateful relish of his meat after long abstinence which doth alwaies highten the pleasure of refection But we have insisted too long upon the motions of Ioy. In the contrary whereof viz. Grief or Sorrow which we have above described to be an ingrateful languor of the Soul from a conception of evil present moving her to contract herself that she may avoid it the Animal Spirits are indeed recalled inward but slowly and without violence so that the blood being by degrees destitute of a sufficient influx of them is trasmitted through the heart with too slow a motion Whence the pulse is rendered little slow rare and weak and there is felt about the heart a certain oppressive strictness as if the orifices of it were drawn together with a manifest chilness congealing the blood and communicating itself to the rest of the body From which dejecting symptoms it is easy to collect that this dolefull affection especialy if it be vehement and of long continuance cannot but infer many and grievous incommodities to the whole body For besides this that it darkneth the spirits and so dulls the wit obscures the judgment blunts the memory and in a word beclouds the Lucid part of the Soul it doth moreover incrassate the blood by refrigeration and by that reason immoderately constringe the heart cause the lamp of life to burn weakly and dimly induce want of sleep by drying the brain corrupt the nutritive juice and convert it into that Devil of a humor Melancholy No wonder then if in men overcome with this so dismal passion the countenance appears pale wan and liveless the limbs grow heavy and indisposed to motion the flesh decays and consumes through want of nourishment and the whole body be precipated into imbecillity Cachexy or an evil habit languishing and other cold and chronic diseases All which the wisest of Men King Salomon hath summ'd up in few words in 17 Chap. of his Proverbs where he advertiseth that a sorrowful spirit drieth up the very bones And yet notwithstanding it is very rarely found that from Grief either long and obstinate or violent and suddainly invading any man hath fallen into a swoon or been suddenly extinguished Which I am apt to refer to this that in the ventricles of the heart tho but very slowly commoved there can hardly be so smale a quantity of blood but it may suffice to keep alive the vital flame burning therein when the orifices of them are almost closed as commonly they are by immoderate grief Somtimes this bitter passion is signified by a certain uncomely distortion of the face somwhat different from that of Laughter and acompanied with Tears somtimes only by Sighs by Sighs when the Grief is extreme by Tears when it is but moderate For as Laughter never proceeds from great and profound Joy so neither doe Tears flow from profound sorrow according to that of the Tragedian leves curae loquuntur ingentes stupent Nor is weeping the pathognomonic or infallible sign of Grief For all tears are not voluntary every light hurt or pain of the Eyes causing them to distill against our will nor all voluntary ones the effect of Grief Some weep for sudden joy joyned with Love especialy old men some when their Revenge is suddainly frustrated by the repentance and submission of the offender and such are the tears of Reconciliation Some again weep out of Anger when they meet with a repulse or check of their desires which causing them with regret to reflect upon their own weakness and insufficiency to compass their wills affects them with displeasure and dissolves them into tears as if they fell out with themselves upon a sudden sense of their own defect and this kind of weeping is most familiar to Children and Women when they are crossed in their wills and expectation as also to Revengefull Men upon their beholding of those whom they commisserate and their want of power to help them Notwithstanding the Occasions of weeping be thus various yet since Tears are frequently both an effect and testimony of sorrow the nature and motions whereof we have now attempted to explain it can be no impertinent Digression to inquire further into their original or sours and the manner how they are made to flow when we are willing to signify our present sorrow by shedding them As for the Fountain therefore whence all our Tears flow and the Matter whereof they consist the succesful industry of Modern Anatomists hath discovered that in the Glandules placed at each corner of the Eyes there is either from the blood brought thither by the arteries as the vulgar doctrine is or as I upon good reasons elswhere delivered conceive from the Nutritive juice brought by nerves separated and kept in store a certain thin clear and watery humor partly saline partly subacid in tast the use whereof is aswell to keep the globes of the eyes moist and slippery for their more easy motion as to serve for Tears when we have occasion to shed them And to this some have added that because there are certain branches of nerves like the tendrels of a vine incircling the vessells leading to and from those Glandules and by their tension somtimes constringing them therefore it is probable that when the serous humor is too abundant in the blood brought into the brain the same is by the arteries whose pulse is quickned somwhat by the pressure of these nerves brought more copiously than at other times into those Glandules and after its separation there detained from returning by the veins that
is so infallible and immutable that excepting those things which the same decree hath left to depend upon our Will we ought to think that in respect of Vs nothing doth or can come to pass that is not necessary and in some measure fatal so that we cannot without error desire any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth But forasmuch as our desires for the most part extend to things that depend neither wholy upon us nor wholy upon others therefore we ought in them to distinguish exactly what dependeth intirely upon ourselves that so we may extend our desires to that alone And as for the rest though we ought to look upon the success as fatal and immutable lest we place our desire thereupon yet ought we also seriously to weigh and consider the reasons that suggest more or less hope that they may serve to direct our actions accordingly For reason requires we should follow the more probable and safe way to our end and when we have done so whatever the Event be we ought contentedly to acquiesce in this that we have done what our Vnderstanding judged to be best And truely when we have learned thus to distinguish Providence Divine from Fortune we shall easily acquire a habit of directing our desires in such a manner that because the accomplishment of them depends upon ourselves only they may alwaies afford us full satisfaction But doe we not here intangle ourselves in great difficulties by endevoring thus to reconcile this eternal Preordination of God to the Liberty of our Will we doe I confess but conceive withall that we may disentangle ourselves again by remembring that our Vnderstanding is finite but the power of God by which He hath from eternity not only foreknown all things that are or can possibly be but also willed and preordained them so to be is infinite and then that it is enough for us clearly and distinctly to know that this infinite Power is essentialy in God but too much for us so to comprehend the same as to see in what manner it leaveth the actions of Men undermined and free For of the Liberty or indifferency that is in us we are all so conscious within ourselves that there is nothing we can comprehend more evidently more perfectly And it were absurd because we cannot comprehend one thing which we know to be of its own nature incomprehensible to us therefore to doubt of another which we do intimately comprehend and by daily experience find to be in ourselves Again since we thus know most certainly that all our Errors depend upon our Will is it not wonderfully strange that we are ever deceived when no Man is willing to be deceived 'T is so indeed but nevertheless the Problem seems capable of solution by considering that it is one thing to be willing to be deceived and another to be willing to give assent to those things wherein it hapens that error is found And though there be no Man who is expresly willing to be deceived yet there is scarcely any who is not often willing to assent to those things wherein error is unknown to him contained Yea it often falls out that the very desire of attaining to truth causeth those who do not rightly know by what way it is to be attained to give judgment of things they do not clearly perceive and so to err So that the summe of all this perplex and intricate matter is this that Error ariseth from our assent to things whose truth or falsity good or evil we have not clearly and distinctly discerned For since God cannot without impious absurdity be imagined to be Author of deceipt the faculty He hath given us of perceiving and discerning cannot naturaly tend to falsity as neither can our faculty of assenting that is our will when it extends itself only to those things that are clearly perceived Whence it follows that to direct our desires aright our main business must be to imploy our Vnderstanding or faculty of discerning strictly and attentively to examine and consider the goodness of the objects before we determin our Will upon them wherein doth chiefly consist the use of all Moral Wisedom and whereupon great part of our temporal Felicity dependeth But do not I here propose a lesson very hard to human frailty to learn Is it not extremely difficult thus accurrately and calmly to examine things when the imagination is vehemently commoved by the object of some more violent passion and the judgment strongly surprised I acknowledge it to be difficult indeed but this difficulty hath its proper Remedy namely Premeditation and Deliberation I find in myself and so do all Men I believe that the motions raised in my blood by the objects of my affections doe so promptly follow upon the first impressions made by them in my brain and from the mechanical disposition of the organs of my body though my Soul contribute nothing toward their advancement but continues indifferent that all the wisedom I can call to my assistance is not sufficient to resist and arrest them And others there are I know who being naturaly propens to the commotions of Joy or of Commiseration or Terror or Anger have not the power to refrain themselves from swooning or tears or trembling or heat of blood whenever their Phansy is vehemently assaulted by objects apt to excite those Passions Nay as if all Mankind were equaly subject to the same defect it is held for a Maxim that the firsâ— motions of our passions are not in our power And yet notwithstanding this so universal defect is not incurable by Premeditation and care When therefore we first feel any such strong commotion of our blood we ought to be premonished and to remember that all things that offer themselves to the imagination respect only the deception of the Reasonable Soul and to perswade her that the reasons which serve to recommend the object of her passion are far more firm and considerable than in reality they are and on the contrary that those which serve to discommend it are much weaker and less considerable than in truth they are And when Passion comes at length to perswade us to do those things whose execution admits of any the least pause or delay we must remember to abstain from giving judgment concerning them much less assent to them and to avert our cogitations to other things untill time and quiet have wholy composed the commotion in our blood Finaly when heat of passion inciteth us to actions that allow little or no time for counsel or deliberation in this case we are to convert our will chiefly upon following those reasons that are contrary to what that passion suggesteth although they appear less valid So when an Enemy invades us unexpectedly that suddain occasion permits us not to take time for deliberation whether of the three is best to resist to submit or to fly Here therefore when we feel ourselves surprised with fear we should
endeavor to avert our thoughts from the consideratâ—on of the danger and fix them upon the reasons for which there is greater security and honor in resistence than in flight and on the contrary when we perceive ourselves to be by anger and desire of revenge provoked to rush turiously upon him who assaults us we must remember to think that it is great imprudence to precipitate ones self into manifest danger when safety may be obtained without infamy and where we are inferior to the Aggressor in point of strength there we are likewise to consider that it is better to retreat honorably or to consent to terms of submission than like a wild beast to expose ourselves to certain death This therefore I ought to prescribe to my self as a Third Pancreston or Vniversal Antidote against the incommodities impendent from Passions viz. to give myself time for deliberation where the occasion will allow it and where it will not there to convert my thought chiefly upon the reasons that contradict the suggestions of my passion and alwaies to remember that the reasons that offer themselves to recommend the object of my passion are not realy so valid and considerable as my imagination represents them to be Nor doth this counsel seem difficult to be put in practise especialy by considerate Men and such who are wont to make serious reflections upon their actions But what need I thus perplex my thoughts in searching for Medicins to mitigate the violence of Passions when there is one singular Remedy infallibly sufficient to secure us from all the Evils they can possibly occasion and that is the constant exercise of Vertue For seeing that the internal commotions of the Reasonable Soul touch us more neerly and by consequence are much more prevalent over us than the affections of the Sensitive which though different from are yet many times conjoyned with them most certain it is that all the tumults raised in the Sensitive have no power to perturb the tranquillity of her Superior the Rational provided she have reason to be in peace and content within herself but serve rather to augment her Joy by giving her occasions to know and delight in her own perfection as often as she finds herself much above any the least discomposure or disturbance from them And that she may be thus content within herself she need do no more but intirely addict herself to the love and persuit of Virtue For whoever hath so lived that his conscience cannot accuse him of ever neglecting to do those things which he judged to be best which is exactly to follow the conduct of Virtue this Man doth from thence receive that intellectual joy and satisfaction which is of such soveraign power to make him happy that the most violent commotions of his affections can never be of force enough to perturb the tranquility of his Soul and which being the Summum Bonum of human life is not to be attained as Seneca from his oracle Epicurus most judiciously observes Epist. 23. nisi ex bona conscientia ex honestis consiliis ex rectis actionibus ex contemptu fortuitorum ex placido vitae ac continuo tenore unam prementis viam Nor is there indeed any other internal satisfaction or joy belonging to the Rational Soul but what she thus formeth to herself out of herself and what can therefore be no more interrupted than she can be destroyed the assurance whereof made the fame Seneca say Epist. 27. Sola virtus praestat gaudium perpetuum securum etiam si quid obstat nubium modo intervenit quae infra feruntur nec unquam diem vincunt And these my dear friend are some of those Philosophical considerations upon which I sometimes reflect as I lately told you as Universal and Efficacious Remedies against vain desires suggested by our Passions and the various Evils to which they usualy expose us Which now you have with so great patience heard 't is fit I should gratefully resign you to a more profitable conversation with your own thoughts which I know to be for the most part imployed in the study of things noble and worthy your excellent wit But first lest you should think I do it somwhat abruptly and by omitting to prescribe also Special Preservatives proper to the excesses of each particular Affection end this discourse before I have finished it suffer me in a word to advertise you that I make this omission not from incogitancy nor out of weariness but only for your greater benefit For being of opinion that the Ethicks of Epicurus are after Holy writ the best Dispensatory I have hitherto read of Natural Medicines for all distempers incident to the mind of Man I conceive I may do you better service by recommending that Book to your serious perusal than by writing less accurately of the same most weighty argument This therefore I now do not doubting but that in the Morals of that grave and profound Philosopher you will find as good Precepts for the moderating your Passions as Human wisedom can give FINIS Article 1. First Supposition that a Sensitive Soul is Corporeal Art 2. Two reasons of that supposition Art 3. Second Supposition that the substance of a sensitive Soul is fiery Art 4. Because life is sâ—ated principaly in the blood and can no more than fire subsist without perpetual aliment and ventilationâ— Art 5. Because it seems to be first formed of the most spiritual particles of the same seminal matter of which the Body it self is made Art 6. A Sensitive Soul imagined to be of the same Figure also with the Body wherein it is contained Art 7. That the Existence of a Sensitive Soul doth as that of Flame depend intirely upon Motion Art 8. That the first operation of a Sensitive Soul is the Formation of the Body according to the modell preordained by Nature Art 9. A recapitulation of the premises Art 10. The Faculties and Organs of a Sensitive Soul reciprocaly inservient each to other Art 11. A two fold desire or inclination congenial to a Sensitive Soul viz. of self preservation and Propagation of her kind Art 12. To what various Mutations and irregular Commotions a Sensitive Soul is subject from her own Passions Art 13. From the temperament and diseases of the Body Art 14. From various impâ—essions of sâ—â—sible objectâ— and exorbitant motions of the Animal spirits Art 15. The various Gestures of a Sensiâ—ive Soul respective to the impressions of external objects variously affecting her Art 16. An Enquiry concerning the Knowledge whereby Brutes are directed â—â— actions volâ—ntary Art 17. The Knowledge of Brutes either Innate or Acquired Art 18. That Brutes are directed only by natural instinct in all actions that conduce either to their own preservation or to the propagation of their species not by Reason Art 19. Nor Material Necessity ArtÌ„ 1. The Excellency of a Rational Soul Art 2. Manifest from her proper Objects Art 3. And Acts. Art 4 Life and
Shame p. 140. 50. The Motions of the Soul and Spirits in Joy p. 141. 51. Laughter p. 144. 52. The Occasions of Laughter p. 145. 53. Laughter from Indignation p. 146. 54. A rare Example of involuntary Laughter p. 147. 55. Conjecture concerning the Cause thereof p. 148. 56. The Motions and Effects of Sorrow p. 150. 57. Sighs and Tears p. 152. 58. Whence Tears flow and p. 154. 59. How they are expressed p. 155. 60. The reason of weeping for Joy p. 157. 61. Why Infants and Old Men are more prone to shed tears p. 158. 62. The reason of Sighing and Sobbing ibid. 63. The Motions and Symptomes of Anger p. 159. 64. Excess of Anger to be avoided and that chiefly by the help of Generosity p. 163. 65. Of all Passions hitherto considered only six are Simple the rest Mixed p. 164. 66. Reasons against publication of this Discourse p. 165. SECT VI. Conclusion 1. THat all the Good and Evil of this life depends upon our Passions p. 168. 2. Which yet were instituted by Nature as incitements to the Soul ibid. 3. That we are liable to Errors not from want of an Omniscious Vnderstanding p. 170. 4. But from our ill use of that finite Vnderstanding we have in the conduct of our desires suggested by Passions p. 172. 5. That all Errors to which such Desires expose us arise from hence that we do not sufficiently distinguish things that depend intirely upon ourselves from those that depend upon others p. 173. 6. Which may be obviated by two General Remedies viz. Generosity and p. 175. 7. Dependence upon Providence Divine p. 177. 8. Which utterly excluding Fortune doth yet leave us at liberty to direct our Desires p. 178. 9. How we may extricate ourselves from the Difficulties that seem to make the decrees of Providence Divine irreconcileable to the Liberty of our Will p. 179. 10. Whence it is that we are often deceived by our Will though never with our Will p. 180. 11. A third General Remedy against Error occasioned by our inordinate Passions viz. Premeditation and Deliberation p. 182. 82. A fourth Vniversal Preservative viz. the stant Exercise of Virtue p. 185. 13. Toward the acquisition whereof the Study of Epicurus's Morals is recommended ¶ p. 187. Errors of this Impression to be by the Reader thus Corrected PAg. 1. l. 5. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pag. 15. lin 18. read viviparous pag. 69. l. 6. read investing pag. 76. lin 16. read detests pag. 180. lin 8. read undetermined pag. 185. lin 2. read thoughts SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS Marcus Antoninus Philosophus Libr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. Sect. 2. O 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Quicquid sum constat id omne caruncula ammula parte principante Proinde mitte libros Nec distrahere amplius nihil obstat quo minus hoc facias sed tanquam qui jam statim moriturus sis carnes istas â—â—ntemnas Cruor est ossicula reticulum ex nervis venulis arteriisque contextum Quin Animam considera qualis sit spiritus est sive aer nec is semper idem sed qui jugiter efflatus denuò resorbetur Tertium restat pars illa principatum gerens Tu ergo sic tecum Senex es partem tui principem servire ulterius ne siveris sed nec motibus à communione humana alienis raptari Nec quicquam quod fato destinatum tibi fuerit vel jam ascitum aversari vel futurum pavere NATURAL HISTORY Of the Passions SECTION I. INTRODUCTION THe Reasonable Soul of Man seems to be of a Nature so Divine and Excellent that it is capable of Understanding all things that are in this life intelligible but yet so reserved and abstruse withall that it cannot understand itself as many most sublime Wits who had long exercised and perplex'd themselves in enquiries into the hidden and mysterious Essence thereof have at length ingenuously confess'd Well therefore may we without blushing own our ignorance of this noblest part of our selves from which we derive all our Knowledge Well may we without regret content our Curiosity with those faint glimmerings of light which shine through the Operations of this Celestial guest in our frail and darksom Tabernacles of Flesh and which are reflected upon our Understanding only from the illustrious Effects of its proper Powers and Acts. What these Powers and Acts are and how vastly they transcend the energie of a Sensitive Soul how perfect soever in its kind as also in what exercises of the Mind they are chiefly observable hath been by Sir Kenelm Digby in his Book of the Rational Soul copiously declared So that here they need not to be repeated Nor indeed would such a prolix research be consistent with my present design which principally aim's at a recollection of some notions that have partly in reading partly in meditation occurred to me concerning the various Passions of the Mind their Genealogy their first sourses and resorts their most remarkable Differences Motions and Forces and in fine by what kind of Connexion and intercourse betwixt two so disparate Natures the one Incorporeal the other Corporeal it is that the Rational Soul is respectively coaffected by them And this with as much brevity as the amplitude of the Subject can admit with as much perspicuity as my weak reason can attain unto in an argument so sublime and difficult That I may then effect this my Design if not so happily as in the end to arrive at the certain and demonstrative Knowledge of the truth I seek yet so plausibly at least as to form an Hypothesis by which the Nature and Reasons of the principal and most predominant of our Passions may be congruously and with probability explained it is requisite I begin with these few Preliminaries 1. What kind of thing I suppose the Sensitive Soul to be as well in Man as in Brutes 2. What seem's to me most consentaneous concerning the Original Nature and royal Seat of the Rational Soul 3. How and after what manner I conceive both Souls to be connexed in Man during this shadow of life 4. How the Rational Soul may come to be affected by the motions of the Sensitive in some Passions and this by predominion of that in others and whence their mutual consent and dissent For my present Conceptions concerning these things though I foresee I shall not be able to establish them all upon Reasons irrefutable and cogent are yet nevertheless to be here premised as Postulates or Fundamentals for introduction and support of the following Theory about the Passions These therefore I shall in their order and concisely and in a plain familiar Style such with which I am always best pleas'd especially in Discourses Philosophical set down tanquam praecognoscenda ¶ SECT II. What kind of Substance the Sensitive Soul may be conceived to be AS for the FIRST Postulatum the Sensitive Soul of a Brute Animal I conceive to be Corporeal and consequently Divisible