transcend any principle that is only endowed with the powers of sense and imagination confined to matter.

To proceed orderly, I will first consider the mind with respect to the quality of its objects, and manner how it is conversant about them.

1. The conception of things purely spiritual, God, angels, separate souls, analogies, the differences, and various respects of things, argue it to be of a spiritual nature. For it is an evident principle, there must be an analogy between the faculty and the object. A material glass cannot represent a spirit; it has no receptivity to take into it an object without figure, colour and diversity of parts, the affections of matter. A spiritual object can only be apprehended by a spiritual operation, and that can only be produced by a spiritual power. The being of things is the root of their working. Now rarefy matter to the highest fineness, reduce it to imperceptible atoms, it is as truly matter as a gross body. For lightness and tenuity are as proper attributes of matter, as weight and density, though less sensible.

If a beast could apprehend what discourse is, it were rational. The soul therefore that understands the spirituality of things is spiritual; otherwise it should act extra sphæram. The intellectual eye alone sees him that is invisible, understands the reasons of truth and justice, looks beyond the bright hills of time into the spiritual eternal world, so that it is evident there is an affinity and likeness in nature between them.

2. Material faculties are confined to the narrow compass of singular and present things; but the mind abstracts from all individuals, their pure nature, and forms their universal species. The eye can only see a coloured object before it, the mind contemplates the nature of colours. It ascends above all the distinctions of time, recollects what is past, foresees what is to * No interval of space or time can hinder its sight. Besides the swift flight of the thoughts over sea and land, the soaring of the mind in a moment above the stars, as if its essence were all vigour and activity, prove that it is not a material power.

come.

* Celer & diis cognatus, omni mundo, & omni ævo. Par. Sen.

+ Sic mihi persuasi, sic sentio, quum tanta celeritas animorum sit, tanta memoria præteritorum, futurorum providentia, tot scientiæ, tot inventa, non posse eam naturam quæ res eas continet mortalem esse. Cic.

3. Sense only acts in a direct way, without reflecting upon itself or its own operations. It is true there is an experimental perception included in vital and sensible acts; but it is far below proper reflection. The eye doth not see the action by which it sees, nor the imagination reflect on itself: for that being conversant only about representations transmitted through the senses, cannot frame an image of itself, and gaze upon it, there being no such resemblance conveyed by the mediation of the outward organs. But the rational soul not only contemplates an object, but reflects on its own contemplation, and retired from all commerce with external things, views itself, its qualities and state, and by this gives testimony of its spiritual and immortal nature.

4. The mind rectifies the false reports of the senses, and forms the judgment of things not according to their impressions, but by such rational evidence of which they are not capable. When the object is too distant, or the medium unfit, or the organs distempered, the senses are deceived. The stars of the brightest magnitude seem to be trembling sparks of light: but the understanding considers that the representations of things are imperfect and less distinct proportionably to their distance, and conceives of their magnitude accordingly. A straight oar appears crooked in the water, but reason observes the error in the refractions, when the image passes through a double medium of unequal clearness. Sweet things taste bitter to one in a fever, but the mind knows that the bitterness is not in the things but in the viciated palate. Moreover, how many things are collected by reason that transcend the power of fancy to conceive, nay, are repugnant to its conception? What corporeal image can represent the immensity of the heavens, as the mind by convincing arguments apprehends it? The Antipodes walk erect upon the earth, yet the fancy cannot conceive them but with their heads downward. Now if the mind were of the same nature with the corporeal faculties, their judgment would be uniform.

5. The senses suffer to a great degree by the excessive vehemence of their objects. Too bright a light blinds the eye. Too strong a sound deafs the ear. But the soul receives vigour and perfection from the excellence and sublimity of its object; and when most intent in contemplation, and concentered in itself, becomes as it were all mind, so that the operations of it as sensitive are suspended, feels the purest delights far above the per

ception of the lower faculties. Now from whence is the distemper of the senses in their exercise, but from matter, as well that of the objects as the organ? And from whence the not suffering of the mind, but from the impressing the forms of objects, separated from all matter, and consequently in an immaterial faculty? For there is of necessity a convenience and proportion, as between a being and the manner of its operations, so between that, and the subject wherein it works. This strongly argues the soul to be immaterial, in that it is impassable from matter, even when it is most conversant in it. For it refines it from corporeal accidents, to a kind of spirituality proportioned to its nature. And from hence proceeds the unbounded capacity of the soul in its conceptions, partly because the forms of things inconsistent in their natures, are so purified by the mind, as they have an objective existence without enmity or contrariety; partly because in: the workings of the mind, one act does not require a different manner from another, but the same reaches to all that is intelligible in the same order.

6. The senses are subject to languishing and decay, and begin to die before death. But the soul many times in the weakness of age is most lively and vigorously productive. The intellectual. offspring carries no marks of the decays of the body. In the approaches of death, when the corporeal faculties are relaxed, and very faintly perform their functions, the workings of the soul are often raised above the usual pitch of its activity. And this is a pregnant probability that it is of a spiritual nature, and that when the body which is here its prison rather than mansion falls to the earth, it is not oppressed by its ruins, but set free, and enjoys its truest liberty. This made Heraclitus say that the soul goes out of the body as lightning from a cloud, because it is never more clear in its conceptions than when freed from matter. And what Lucretius excellently expresses in his verses is true in another sense that he intended;

Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,

In terram; sed quod missum est ex Ætheris oris,
Id rursus cæli fulgentia templa receptant.

* Καθ' Ηρακλειτον ὥσπερ ἀςραπή νέφος διαττα μενη τα σώμα

7. Plutarch in Rom.

What sprang from earth falls to its native place:
What heaven inspir'd releas'd from that weak tie
Of flesh ascends above the shining sky.

Before I proceed, I will briefly consider the objections of some who secretly favour the part of impiety.

11. It is objected, that the soul in its intellectual operations depends on the phantasms, and those are drawn from the representations of things conveyed through the senses.

But it will appear this does not enervate the force of the arguments for its spiritual nature. For this dependance is only objective, not instrumental of the soul's perception. The first images of things are introduced by the mediation of the senses, and by their presence (for nothing else is requisite) the mind is excited, and draws a picture resembling, or if it please, not resembling them, and so operates alone, and completes its own work. Of this we have a clear experiment in the conceptions which the mind forms of things so different from the first notices of them by the senses.

The first apprehensions of the Deity are from the visible effects of his power, but the idea in which the understanding contemplates him, is framed by removing all imperfections that are in the creatures, and consequently that he is not corporeal. For whatsoever is so, is liable to corruption, that is absolutely repugnant to the perfection of his nature. Now the common sense and fancy, only powerful to work in matter, cannot truly express an immaterial being. Indeed as painters by their colours represent invisible things, as darkness, the winds, the internal affections of the heart, so that by the representations, the thoughts are awakened of such objects; so the fancy may with the like art shadow forth spiritual beings by the most resembling forms taken from sensible things. Thus it imagines the angels under the likeness of young men with wings, to express their vigour and velocity. But the mind by its internal light conceives them in another manner, by a spiritual form, that exceeds the utmost efficacy of the corporeal organs, so that it is evident the soul as intellectual in its singular and most proper operations, is not assisted by the ministry of the senses.

2. It is objected that the soul in its superior operations depends on the convenient temper of the body. The thoughts are

clear and orderly when the brain is composed. On the contrary when the predominancy of an humour distempers it, the mind feels its infirmities. And from hence it seems to be of a corporeal nature, depending on the body in its being, as in its working. But this, if duly considered, will raise no just prejudice against its spiritual immortal nature. For,

(1.) The sympathy of things is no convincing argument that they are of the same nature. There may be so strict an union of beings of different natures, that they must necessarily be subject to impressions from one another. Can any reasons demonstrate that a spiritual substance endowed with the powers of understanding and will, cannot be united in a vital composition to a body, as the vegetative soul is in plants, and the sensitive in beasts? There is no implicit repugnance in this that proves it impossible. Now if such a complex being were in nature, how would that spiritual soul act in that body, that in its first union with it (excepting some universal principles) is a rasa tabula, as a white paper, without the notices of things written in it? Certainly in no other imaginable manner than as man's soul does

now.

Indeed if man as compounded of soul and body, were a sensitive animal, and only rational as partaking of the universal intellect lent to individuals for a time, and retiring at death to its first being, as Averroes fancied, there would be no cause of such a sympathy: but the soul as intellectual, is an informing, not assisting form. And it is an evident proof of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, by this strict and sensible union, to make the soul vigilant and active, to provide for the convenience and comfort of the body in the present state, and that notwithstanding such a discord in nature, there should be such a concord in inclinations.

(2.) Though the mental operations of the soul are hindered by the ill habit of the body, yet the mind suffers no hurt, but still retains its intellectual power without impairing. A skilful musician does not lose his art that plays on a harp when the strings are false, though the music is not so harmonious as when it is justly tuned. The visive faculty is not weakened, when the air by a collection of gross vapours is so thick, that the eye cannot distinctly perceive distant objects. When by the heats of wine or a disease the spirits are inflamed, and made fierce and unruly,