PREFACE TO" PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c." AMONG the various Philosophical Enquiries which my younger studies had committed to writing, these few have escaped the injuries of time, and other accidents, and by the persuasion of a learned friend are now offered to the public view. Some of them may date their original at the distance of thirty years: Many new books have since appeared in the world, and new conversations have arisen, which have sometimes given occasion for the fresh exercise of my thoughts on these subjects. And since my more important duties have allowed me some hours of leisure and amusement, I have now and then added to these papers, which are now grown up to this bulk and form. The subjects treated of in the two first essays, viz. Space, Substance, Body and Spirit, have no inconsiderable influence in adjusting our ideas of God and creatures, animate and inanimate beings. It is strange that philosophers, even in this enlightened age, this age of juster reasoning, should run into such wide extremes in their opinions concerning space; that while some depress it below all real being, and suppose it to be mere nothing, others exalt it to the nature and dignity of godhead. It would be a great happiness if we could all unite in some settled and undoubted opinion on this subject. The unlearned may ridicule the controversy, but men of science know the difficulties that attend it. I make no pretence to have cleared them all away; but if I have said any thing here that may strike a glimpse of light into this obscure question, I shall acknowledge my felicity. Body and spirit are the two only proper substances that we know of; and if their distinct essences can be limited and adjusted in clear ideas, it will be a happy clue to lead us into some further knowledge of the visible and invisible world, and will give us a more particular and distinct acquaintance with human nature, which is compounded of matter and mind. There are few studies so worthy of man as the knowledge of himself.Many advantages in moral sciences attend a right notion of the union of soul and body, the sensations, the appetites, the passions, and various operations which are derived thence. This hath been, I confess, a favourite employment of my thoughts: Whether I have succeeded in any of my meditations or sentiments on this subject, I must leave the reader to judge. I cannot pretend that all my opinions in these matters are exactly squared to any public hypothesis. From the infancy of my studies, I began to be of the eclectic sect. Some of these essays are founded on the Cartesian doctrine of spirits, though several principles in his system of the material world could never prevail upon my assent; and what other opinions of that philosophy relating to the phenomena of heaven and earth I had imbibed in the academy, I have seen reason long ago to resign at the foot of Sir Isaac Newton. But as the two worlds of matter and mind stand at an utter and extreme distance from each other, so the weakness of the Cartesian hypothesis of bodies and its utter demolition, does by no means draw with it the ruin of his doctrine of spirits. I am not so attached to this scheme, nor do I do plead for it as a doctrine fall of light and evidence, and which has no doubts and difficulties attending it: After all my studious enquiries into this noble subject, I am far from being arrived at an assurance of the truth of these opinions. The speediest way to full assurance in any point, is to read only one side of a controversy: These are generally the confident and infallible dictators to mankind; they see no difficulty and admit no doubt. I must confess I have followed a different method of study, and therefore I have so few indubitables among my philosophical acquirements. But though I cannot pronounce certainty on my sentiments on this argument, yet I have been loth to renounce and obliterate them at once, and to leave so vast a vacancy among my intellectual ideas, unless I could have found some tolerable system of the nature and operations of our souls to put in the room of it, which was attended with less or fewer difficulties. But this I have sought in vain, both in my own meditations, and among the works of the learned. An inextended spirit, without proper proximities to place or body, is a hard idea to us, while we dwell in this incarnate state among shapes and matter, place or motion; but a spirit that is extended, or a thinking power with dimensions and shape, with local parts and motion, appears to me still an barder idea, and gives greater pain and difficulty to the mind that will pursue any position through all its train of consequences. I think I have no partiality for the name of the French philosopher: But let every man who has sent any new beams of light into the world of nature, and taught us better to understand the works of God, have the just debt of honours paid to his memory. Let the illustrious name of Newton stand highest in that sphere, and without a rival. But let those also who have opened the way for so great a light to shine, by removing the rubbish and darkness of former ages, have their proper monuments of praise. Had not a Des Cartes risen up in the world and traced his way before, I much question whether Sir Isaac Newton had ever made so vast and sublime a progress in the discovery of his wonders to this enlightened age. if I can pretend to any freedom of thought in my little sphere of enquiry after truth, I must ascribe the original of it to my reading the first book of Des Cartes's principles in the very beginning of my studies, and the familiar comments which I heard on that work. That great man, in some of his writings, pointed out the road to true philosophy, by reason and experiment, and mathematical science; though he did not steadily pursue that track himself in his own philosophising on corporeal things. Gassendus and the Lord Bacon went a little before him: Mr. Boyle followed after; and they all carried on the noble design of freeing the world from the long slavery of Aristotle and substantial forms of occult qualities, and words without ideas. They taught mankind to trace out truth by reasoning and experiment; and they agreed to leave her to stand on her own fouudations, without the support of an ipse dixit. The present age, in all their boasted and glorious acquisitions of knowledge, owe more to these gentlemen, than I have found some of them willing to pay.. Mr. Locke is another illustrious name. He has proceeded to break our philosophical fetters, and to give us further release from the bondage of aneient authorities and maxims. I acknowledge the light and satisfaction which I have derived from many of his works. His admirable letter of toleration led me as it were into a new region of thought, wherein I found myself sur prised and charmed with truth. There was no room to doubt in the midst of sun-beams. These leaves triumphed over all the remnant of my prejudices on the side of bigotry, and taught me to allow all men the same freedom to chuse their religion, as I claim to chuse my own. Blessed be God that this doctrine has now taken such root in Great Britain, that 1 trust neither the powers nor the frauds of Rome, nor the malice, pride, and darkness of mankind, nor the rage of hell shall ever prevail against it. His treatises of the original of government, and of education, have laid the foundations of true liberty, and the rules of just restraint for the younger and elder years of man. His writings relating to christianity, have some excellent thoughts in them; though I fear he has sunk some of the divine themes and glories of that dispensation too much below their original design, His essay on the human understanding has diffused fairer light through the world in numerous affairs of science and of human life. There are many admirable chapters in that book, and many truths in them, which are worthy of letters of gold. But there are some opinions in his philosopby, especially relating to intellectual beings, their powers and operations, which have not gained my assent. The man who hath laboured to lead the world into freedom of thought, has thereby given a large permission to his readers to propose what doubts, difficulties, or remarks have arisen in their minds, while they peruse what he has written. And indeed several of the essays which are published (besides the XIIth, which bears that title) are the fruits of such remarks, as will be easily observed in the perusal of them. The essays on the various works of nature in the upper and lower parts of the creation, in the sun and stars, in plants and animals, were written at first with a design to entertain the politer part of mankind, whose circumstances of life indulge them with much leisure and ease, and who search not very far into the hidden principles of nature, and their abstruse springs of operation. I know the philosophers of the present age have carried their enquiries to great length, beyond any of my meditations: Yet perhaps these may be so happy as to lead those persons who know them not, and who search no further than I do, into an exalted idea of the wonders of divine wisdom in the heavens and the earth, the vegetable and the animal world. Perhaps also they may serve to give no unprofiable amusement to their leisure hours, as the composure of them hath given to me. [And here I would take notice, that in the second edition, in the first and second sections of the ninth essay, and the appendix thereto, I have added a few sentences to express my thoughts more clearly concerning the everlasting but uniform agency of God on the material world, in the production of plants and animals; and to guard against those objections which the Rev. Dr. Denne offers with great civility in his preface to his late ingenious sermon of the wisdom of God in the vegetable creation, and acknowledge it was my want of greater expressness might lead him into a mistake of my sentiments. Though we both pursue the same end, viz. the display of the wisdom of God in the animal and vegetable worlds, yet I beg leave to make use of a very different opinion as the means of attaining it.] If I were to make apologies for publishing any thing of this kind to the world, I would say that the chief part of these subjects are not beneath the notice and enquiry of any profession and character whatsoever. If I am charged with repeating the same thing several times, I would reply, that it is perhaps introduced on different occasions, or set in a different light, or at least, to speak plainly, when I had wrote one, I had forgot the other, these papers being written at many years distance. And this may serve also among persons of temper and candour to apologize for small mistakes, if there should be any appearing opposition between my expressions in different essays, which were written in distant parts of life. I hope none will be found so gross, but may be well reconciled by a candid reader. Shall I be told that other writers have said the very same thing which I have done, and in a much better manner? I confess I know it not; for though I now and then look into modern books of philosophy, yet there are many which I have never seen, having not sufficient time to peruse them ; and I am persuaded some of these essays were framed long before those very works, whence some persons may imagine I have borrowed several of my reasonings. If there be any hint or thought amongst them all that may assist the reader in his conceptions of God or of himself, of natural or divine things, let him correct or retrench, let him refine, let him alter or improve it as he pleases, and make it his own, that I may thank him for it as a new acquisition. And let him renounce whatsoever he finds disagreeable to truth, reason, or |