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brutes to have sensation, it will follow, either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of perception and thinking; or that all animals have immaterial, and consequently, according to your lordship, immortal souls, as well as men; and to say, that fleas and mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as going a great way to serve an hypothesis.

I have been pretty large in making this matter plain, that they who are so forward to bestow hard censures or names on the opinions of those who differ from them, may consider whether sometimes they are not more due to their own; and that they may be persuaded a little to temper that heat, which, supposing the truth in their current opinions, gives them (as they think) a right to lay what imputations they please on those who would fairly examine the grounds they stand upon. For talking with a supposition and insinuations, that truth and knowledge, nay, and religion too, stand and fall with their systems, is at best but an imperious way of begging the question, and assuming to themselves, under the pretence of zeal for the cause of God, a title to infallibility. It is very becoming that men's zeal for truth should go as far as their proofs, but not go for proofs themselves. He that attacks received opinions with any thing but fair arguments, may, I own, be justly suspected not to mean well, nor to be led by the love of truth; but the same may be said of him too, who so defends them. An error is not the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected; and if it were put to the vote any where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would have the majority, at least whilst the authority of men, and not the examination of things, must be its measure. The imputation of scepticisin, and those broad insinuations to render what I have writ suspected, so frequent, as if that were the great business of all this pains you have been at about me, has made me say thus much, my lord, rather as my sense of the way to establish truth in its full force and beauty, than that I think the world will need to have any thing said to it, to make it distinguish between your lordship's and my design in writing, which therefore I sc. curely leave to the judgment of the reader, and return to the argument in hand.

What I have above said, I take to be a full answer to all that your lordship would infer from my idea of matter, of liberty, of identity, and from the power of abstracting. You ask, * How can my idea of liberty agree with the idea that bodies can operate only by motion and impulse? Ans. By the omnipotency of God, who can make all things agree, that involve not a contradiction. It is true, I say, "That bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else." And so I thought when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation. But I am since convinced by the judicious Mr. Newton's incomparable book, that it is too bold a presumption to limit God's power in this point by my narrow conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways unconceivable to me, is not only a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers, and ways of operation, above what can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we know of matter, but also an unquestionable, and every where visible instance, that he has done so. And therefore in the next edition of my book, I will take care to have that passage rectified.

1st Answer.

Essay, B. 2. Ch. 3. §. 11.

As

As to self-consciousness, your lordship asks, * What is there like selfconsciousness in matter? Nothing at all in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, will never be proved by asking, + How is it pos sible to apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive? The weakness of our apprehension I grant in the case: I confess as much as you please, that we cannot conceive how a solid, no, nor how an unsolid created substance thinks; but this weakness of our apprehensions reaches not the power of God, whose weakness is stronger than any thing in men.

Your argument from abstraction we have in this question, If it may be in the power of matter to think, how comes it to be so impossible for such organized bodies as the brutes have, to enlarge their ideas by abstraction? Ans. This seems to suppose, that I place thinking within the natural power of matter. If that be your meaning, my lord, I never say, nor suppose, that all matter has naturally in it a faculty of thinking, but the direct contrary. But if you mean that certain parcels of matter, ordered by the Divine power, as seems fit to him, may be made capable of receiving from his omnipotency the faculty of thinking; that, indeed, I say; and that being granted, the answer to your question is easy; since, if Omnipotency can give thought to any solid substance, it is not hard to conceive, that God may give that faculty in a higher or lower degree, as it pleases him, who knows what disposition of the subject is suited to such a particular way or degree of thinking.

Another argument to prove, that God cannot endue any parcel of matter with the faculty of thinking, is taken from those words of mine, where I show, by what connexion of ideas we may come to know, that God is an immaterial substance. They are these, "The idea of an eternal "actual knowing being, with the idea of immateriality, by the inter "vention of the idea of matter, and of its actual division, divisibility, ❝and want of perception," &c. From whence your lordship thus argues, ** Here the want of perception is owned to be so essential to matter, that God is therefore concluded to be immaterial. Answ. Perception and knowledge in that one eternal being, where it has its source, it is visible must be essentially inseparable from it; therefore the actual want of perception in so great part of the particular parcels of matter, is a demonstration, that the first being, from whom perception and knowledge are inseparable, is not matter: how far this makes the want of perception an essential property of matter, I will not dispute; it suffices that it shows, that perception is not an essential property of matter; and therefore matter cannot be that eternal original being to which perception and knowledge are essential. Matter, I say, naturally is without perception: ergo, says your lordship, want of perception is an essential property of matter, and God does not change the essential properties of things, their nature remaining. From whence you infer, that God cannot bestow on any parcel of matter (the nature of matter remaining) a faculty of thinking. If the rules of logic, since my days, be not changed, I may safely deny this consequence. For an argument that runs thus, God does not; ergo, he cannot, I was taught when I first came to the university, would not hold. For I never said God did; but, ++ "That I see no contradiction in it, + Ibid.

*

Ist Ans.

Ibid. 1st Letter. tt B. 4. C. 3. §. 6.

**Ist Ans.

"that

"that he should, if he pleased, give to some systems of senseless matter "a faculty of thinking;" and I know nobody, before Des Cartes, that ever pretended to show that there was any contradiction in it. So that at worst, my not being able to see in matter any such incapacity, as makes it impossible for Omnipotency to bestow on it a faculty of thinking, makes me opposite only to the Cartesians. For, as far as I have seen or heard, the fathers of the christian church never pretended to demonstrate that matter was incapable to receive a power of sensation, perception and thinking, from the hand of the omnipotent Creator. Let us, therefore, if you please, suppose the form of your argumentation right, and that your lordship means, God cannot: and then, if your argument be good, it proves, that God could not give to Balaam's ass a power to speak to his master as he did; for the want of rational discourse being natural to that species, it is but for your lordship to call it an essential property, and then God cannot change the essential properties of things, their nature remaining whereby it is proved, that God cannot, with all his omnipotency, give to an ass a power to speak as Balaam's did.

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You say, my lord, You do not set bounds to God's omnipotency: for he may, if he please, change a body into an immaterial substance, i. e. take away from a substance the solidity which it had before, and which made it matter, and then give it a faculty of thinking, which it had not before, and which makes it a spirit, the same substance remaining. For if the substance remains not, body is not changed into an immaterial substance, but the solid substance, and all belonging to it, is annihilated, and an immaterial substance created, which is not a change of one thing into another, but the destroying of one, and making another de novo. In this change therefore of a body or material substance into an immaterial, let us observe these distinct considerations.

First, you say, God may, if he pleases, take away from a solid substance solidity, which is that which makes it a material substance or body; and may make it an immaterial substance, i. e. a substance without soli dity. But this privation of one quality gives it not another; the bare taking away a lower or less noble quality does not give it an higher or nobler; that must be the gift of God. For the bare privation of one, and a meaner quality, cannot be the position of an higher and better; unless any one will say, that cogitation, or the power of thinking, results from the nature of substance itself; which if it do, then wherever there is substance, there must be cogitation, or a power of thinking. Here then, upon your lordship's own principles, is an immaterial substance without the faculty of thinking.

In the next place, you will not deny, but God may give to this substance, thus deprived of solidity, a faculty of thinking; for you suppose it made capable of that, by being made immaterial; whereby you allow, that the same numerical substance may be sometimes wholly incogitative, or without a power of thinking, and at other times perfectly cogitative, or endued with a power of thinking.

Further, you will not deny, but God can give it solidity and make it material again. For, I conclude, it will not be denied, that God can make it again what it was before. Now I crave leave to ask your lordship, why God, having given to this substance the faculty of thinking after solidity was taken from it, cannot restore to it solidity again, with

* 1st Answer.

out

out taking away the faculty of thinking? When you have resolved this, my lord, you will have proved it impossible for God's omnipotence to give a solid substance a faculty of thinking; but till then, not having proved it impossible, and yet denying that God can do it, is to deny that he can do what is in itself possible; which, as I humbly conceive, is visibly to set bounds to God's omnipotency, though you say here you do not set bounds to God's omnipotency.

If I should imitate your lordship's way of writing, I should not omit to bring in Epicurus here, and take notice that this was his way, Deum verbis ponere, re tollere: and then add, that I am certain you do not think he promoted the great ends of religion and morality. For it is with such candid and kind insinuations as these, that you bring in both + Hobbes and Spinosa into your discourse here about God's being able, if he please, to give to some parcels of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of thinking: neither of those authors having, as appears by any passages you bring out of them, said any thing to this question, nor having, as it seems, any other business here, but by their names fkilfully to give that character to my book, with which you would recommend it to the world.

I pretend not to inquire what measure of zeal, nor for what, guides your lordship's pen in such a way of writing, as your's has all along been with me only I cannot but consider, what reputation it would give to the writings of the fathers of the church, if they should think truth required, or religion allowed them to imitate such patterns. But God be thanked, there be those amongst them who do not admire such ways of managing the cause of truth or religion; they being sensible that if every one, who believes or can pretend he hath truth on his side, is thereby au thorized, without proof, to insinuate whatever may serve to prejudice men's minds against the other side, there will be great ravage made on charity and practice, without any gain to truth or knowledge and that the liberties frequently taken by disputants to do so, may have been the cause that the world in all ages has received so much harm, and so little advantage from controversies in religion.

These are the arguments which your lordship has brought to confute one saying in my book, by other passages in it; which therefore being all but argumenta ad hominem, if they did prove what they do not, are of no other use, than to gain a victory over me: a thing methinks, so much beneath your lordship, that it does not deserve one of your pages. The question is, whether God can, if he pleases, bestow on any parcel of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of perception and thinking. You say, you look upon a mistake herein to be of dangerous consequence, as to the great ends of religion and morality. If this be so, my lord, I think one may well wonder, why your lordship has brought no arguments to establish the truth itself which you look on to be of such dangerous consequence to be mistaken in; but have spent so many pages only in a personal matter, in endeavouring to show, that I had inconsistencies in my book; which if any such thing had been showed, the question would be still as far from being decided, and the danger of mistaking about it as little prevented, as if nothing of all this had been said. If therefore your lordship's care of the great ends of religion and morality have made

Ist Answer.

+ Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

you

you think it necessary to clear this question, the world has reason to conclude there is little to be said against that proposition which is to be found in my book, concerning the possibility, that some parcels of matter might be so ordered by Omnipotence, as to be endued with a faculty of thinking, if God so pleased; since your lordship's concern for the promoting the great ends of religion and morality, has not enabled you to produce one argument against a proposition that you think of so dangerous consequence to them.

And here I crave leave to observe, that though in your title page you promise to prove, that my notion of ideas is inconsistent with itself, (which if it were, it could hardly be proved to be inconsistent with any thing else) and with the articles of the christian faith; yet your attempts all along have been to prove me, in some passages of my book, inconsistent with myself, without having shown any proposition in my book inconsistent with any article of the christian faith.

I think your lordship has indeed made use of one argument of your own: but it is such an one that I confess I do not see how it is apt much to promote religion, especially the christian religion, founded on revelation. I shall set down your lordship's words, that they may be considered: you say,* that you are of opinion, that the great ends of religion and morality are best secured by the proofs of the immortality of the soul from its nature and properties; and which you think prove it immaterial. Your lordship does not question whether God can give immortality to a material substance; but you say it takes off very much from the evidence of immortality, if it depend wholly upon God's giving that, which of its own nature it is not capable of, &c. So likewise you say, + If a man cannot be certain, but that matter may think, (as I affirm) then what becomes of the soul's immateriality (and consequently immortality) from its operations? But for all this, say I, his assurance of faith remains on its own basis. Now you appeal to any man of sense, whether the finding the uncertainty of his own principles, which he went upon, in point of reason, doth not weaken the credibility of these fundamental articles, when they are considered purely as matters of faith? For before, there was a natural credibility in them on account of reason; but by going on wrong grounds of certainty, all that is lost, and instead of being certain, he is more doubtful than ever. And if the evidence of faith fall so much short of that of reason, it must needs have less effect upon men's minds, when the sub. serviency of reason is taken away; as it must be when the grounds of certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all probable, that he who finds his reason deceive him in such fundamental points, shall have his faith stand firm and unmoveable on the account of revelation? For in matters of revelation there must be some antecedent principles supposed, before we can believe any thing on the account of it.

More to the same purpose we have some pages farther, where, from some of my words your lordship says, you cannot but observe, that we have no certainty upon my grounds, that self-consciousness depends upon an individual immaterial substance, and consequently that a material substance may, according to my principles, have self-consciousness in it; at least, that I am not certain of the contrary. Whereupon your lordship bids me consider, whether this doth not a little affect the whole article of the resurrection. What does all this tend to, but to make the world

* 1st Answer.

+ 2 Answer.

‡ Ibid.

believe

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