ledgments to your lordship, for the good opinion you are pleased here to express of the "author of the Essay of Human Understanding," and that you do not impute to him the ill use some may have made of his notions. But he craves leave to say, that he should have been better preserved from the hard and sinister thoughts, which some men are always ready for, if, in what you have here published, your lordship had been pleased to have shown where you directed your discourse against him, and where against others, from p. 234, to p. 262, of your Vindication of the Trinity. For nothing but my book and my words being quoted, the world will be apt to think that I am the person who argue against the Trinity, and deny mysteries, against whom your lordship directs those pages. And indeed, my lord, though I have read them over with great attention, yet, in many places, I cannot discern whether it be against me or any body else, that your lordship is arguing. That which often makes the difficulty is, that I do not see how what I say does at all concern the controversy your lordship is engaged in, and yet I alone am quoted. Your lordship goes on:

"Let us suppose this principle to be true," that the simple ideas by sensation or reflection are the sole matter and foundation of all our reasoning: "I ask then how we come to be certain, that there are spiritual substances in the world, since we can have no clear and distinct ideas concerning them? Can we be certain, without any foundation of reason? This is a new sort of certainty, for which we do not envy those pretenders to reason. But methinks, they should not at the same time assert the absolute necessity of these ideas to our knowledge, and declare that we may have certain knowledge without them. If there be any other method, they overthrow their own principle; if there be none, how come they to any certainty that there are both bodily and spiritual substances?"

This paragraph, which continues to prove that we may have certainty without clear and distinct ideas, I

would flatter myself is not meant against me, because it opposes nothing that I have said; and so shall not say any thing to it, but only set it down to do your lordship right, that the reader may judge. Though I do not find how he will easily overlook me, and think I am not at all concerned in it, since my words alone are quoted in several pages immediately preceding and following: and in the very next paragraph it is said, "how they come to know;" which word, they, must signify somebody besides the author of Christianity not mysterious; and then I think, by the whole tenour of your lordship's discourse, nobody will be left but me, possible to be taken to be the other: for in the same paragraph your lordship says, "the same persons say, that notwithstanding their ideas, it is possible for matter to think."

I know not what other person says so but I; but if any 'one does, I am sure no person but I say so in my book, which your lordship has quoted for them, viz. Human Understanding, B. iv. c. 3. This, which is a riddle to me, the more amazes me, because I find it in a treatise of your lordship's, who so perfectly understands the rules and methods of writing, whether in controversy or any other way. But this, which seems wholly new to me, I shall better understand when your lordship pleases to explain it. In the mean time I mention it as an apology for myself, if sometimes I mistake your lordship's aim, and so misapply my answer. What follows in your lordship's next paragraph is this:

"As to these latter (which is my business) I must inquire farther, how they come to know there are such? The answer is, by self-reflection on those powers we find in ourselves, which cannot come from a mere bodily substance. I allow the reason to be very good; but the question I ask is, whether this argument be from the clear and distinct idea or not? We have ideas in ourselves of the several operations of our minds, of knowing, willing, considering, &c. which cannot come from a bodily substance. Very true; but is all this contained in the simple idea of these operations? How can that be, when the same

*

persons say, that notwithstanding their ideas, it is possible for matter to think? For it is said- that we have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any material being thinks or not; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency hath not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive or think. If this be true, then for all that we can know by our ideas of matter and thinking, matter may have a power of thinking: and if this hold, then it is impossible to prove a spiritual substance in us, from the idea of thinking: for how can we be assured by our ideas, that God hath not given such a power of thinking to matter so disposed as our bodies are? Especially since it is said, that in respect of our notions, it is not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to our idea of matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance, with a faculty of thinking. -Whoever asserts this can never prove a spiritual substance in us from a faculty of thinking; because he cannot know from the idea of matter and thinking, that matter so disposed cannot think. And he cannot be certain, that God hath not framed the matter of our bodies so as to be capable of it."

These words, my lord, I am forced to take to myself; for though your lordship has put it the same persons say, in the plural number, yet there is nobody quoted for the following words, but my Essay; nor do I think anybody but I has said so. But so it is in this present chapter, I have the good luck to be joined with others for what I do not say, and others with me for what I imagine they do not say; which, how it came about, your lordship can best resolve. But to the words themselves in them your lordship argues, that upon my principles it" cannot be proved that there is a spiritual substance in us.” To which give me leave, with submission, to say, that I think it may be proved from my principles, and I think I have done it; and the proof * Human Understanding, B. ii. c. 3. § 6.

in my book stands thus: First, we experiment in ourselves thinking. The idea of this action or mode of thinking is inconsistent with the idea of self-subsistence, and therefore has a necessary connexion with a support or subject of inhesion: the idea of that support is what we call substance; and so from thinking experimented in us, we have a proof of a thinking substance in us, which in my sense is a spirit. Against this your lordship will argue, that by what I have said of the possibility that God may, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, it can never be proved that there is a spiritual substance in us, because upon that supposition it is possible it may be a material substance that thinks in us. I grant it; but add, that the general idea of substance being the same every where, the modification of thinking, or the power of thinking joined to it, makes it a spirit, without considering what other modifications it has, as whether it has the modification of solidity or no. As on the other side, substance, that has the modification or solidity, is matter, whether it has the modification of thinking or no. And therefore, if your lordship means by a spiritual an immaterial substance, I grant I have not proved, nor upon my principles can it be proved, (your lordship meaning, as I think you do, demonstratively proved) that there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I presume, from what I have said about the supposition of a system of matter thinking (which there demonstrates that God is immaterial) will prove it in the highest degree probable, that the thinking substance in us is immaterial. But your lordship thinks not probability enough; and by charging the want of demonstration upon my principles, that the thinking thing in us is immaterial, your lordship seems to conclude it demonstrable from principles of philosophy. That demonstration I should with joy receive from your lordship, or any one. For though all the great ends of morality and religion are well enough secured without it, as I have shown t; yet it would be a great advance of our knowledge in nature and philosophy.

B. iv. c. 10. § 16.

VOL. IV.

*

+ B. iv. c. 3. § 6.

D

To what I have said in my book, to show that all the great ends of religion and morality are secured barely by the immortality of the soul, without a necessary supposition that the soul is immaterial, I crave leave to add, that immortality may and shall be annexed to that, which in its own nature is neither immaterial nor immortal, as the apostle expressly declares in these words; "*for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

Perhaps my using the word spirit for a thinking substance, without excluding materiality out of it, will be thought too great a liberty, and such as deserves censure, because I leave immateriality out of the idea I make it a sign of. I readily own, that words should be sparingly ventured on in a sense wholly new; and nothing but absolute necessity can excuse the boldness of using any term, in a sense whereof we can produce no example. But in the present case, I think, I have great authorities to justify me. The soul is agreed, on all hands, to be that in us which thinks. And he that will look into the first book of Cicero's Tusculan Questions, and into the sixth book of Virgil's Æneids, will find that these two great men, who of all the Romans best understood philosophy, thought, or at least did not deny, the soul to be a subtile matter, which might come under the name of aura, or ignis, or æther; and this soul they both of them called spiritus: in the notion of which it is plain they included only thought and active motion, without the total exclusion of matter. Whether they thought right in this, I do not say; that is not the question; but whether they spoke properly, when they called an active, thinking, subtile substance, out of which they excluded only gross and palpable matter, spiritus, spirit. I think that nobody will deny, that, if any among the Romans can be allowed to speak properly, Tully and Virgil are the two who may most securely be depended on for it: and one of them, speaking of the soul, says, "dum spiritus hos regit artus;" and the other, "vita continetur corpore et spiritu." Where it is plain, by corpus he means (as generally every where) only gross matter that may be felt and handled; as appears by these

* 1 Cor. xv. 53.