If after all, we find difficulties in adjusting these speculations with a perfect accuracy, let us remember, that our understandings are very imperfect powers; that forms of learning as well as unlearned prejudices sometimes lead us into mistakes; and that all things will not easily be collected and bound up under our grammatical and logical ways of speaking, and confined to them only.

ESSAY III.

Of the Original of our Perceptions and Ideas.

FATHER Malebranche, who was an admirable writer in the last age, and has many excellent chapters in his treatise of The Search after Truth, yet has vented a strange opinion, that we see all our ideas in God. It is the known and distinguishing character of this rational author, that he falls into a sort of enthusiasm in his doctrine concerning our ideas of things, and their original. He supposes God to contain in himself all material beings in a spiritual manner; which he calls the intelligible sun, moon, trees, and stars, the intelligible world, and intelligible extension: And that created minds receive all their ideas of external objects, by contemplating this intelligible world which exists in God; which he explains and attempts to prove at large in the sixth chapter of the third book, part 11. and to prepare the way, he labours to refute all other opinions in the five chapters preceding. But among all these opinions of the original ideas he has neither exactly proposed nor refuted the true Cartesian doctrine, which, with a little alteration, seems the most evident and most defensible of all: And this. I shall endeavour to describe in several theses in a distinct manner, wherein we shall see how far God concurs in the ideas formed by the mind.

I. The soul of man is a thinking being, created and preserved with all its capacities by God the Almighty Spirit. The Cartesian writers make self-subsistent and perpetual cogitation to be the intimate essence and nature of it: But I had rather say, It is a power of thing, i. e. of perceiving and willing in con tinual act; and consequently, it is created capable of forming er receiving ideas in the mind, as well as of exerting volitions, or acts of the will. And as it is brought into being by the creative power of God, so it is the almighty conserving power of God that

maintains its being, with this capacity of perception; and it is his common providential concourse that continues it in constant act : By which I mean no more than the same creating, conserving and concurring influence of God, whereby all bodies were produced at first, whereby they persist now in being, and act or are acted according to their natures, and the laws given them by the Creator.

II. How the soul of man forms or acquires spiritual or intellectual ideas, i. e. the ideas of itself, of its own actions, and the ideas of other minds or spirits, we cannot conceive any otherwise than by its own immediate consciousness of itself and its actions, by turning its thoughts inward upon its own existence, nature, perceptions and volitions, operations and affections, and by the remembrance of and reflections upon its own modifications, as well as by its own consciousness of them at first: This is what Mr. Locke calls the knowledge of things, or gaining ideas by reflection. It is by this means we form or acquire all our ideas of understanding, will, spirit, assent, dissent, fear, hope, &c.

III. How the soul gains any new ideas of bodily things, when it is in a separate state, we are not so well capable of determining, till we arrive at that state ourselves. But in this present state of union with a body, we may give some happy guesses how we come to form corporeal ideas, or to acquire sensations of what relates to the body. This is what Mr. Locke chiefly calls gaining ideas by sensation. And in order to this we must first consider, whether a spirit could receive any sensations from matter, without a special union to some particular body; and then what is meant by the union of a spirit to a body.

IV. As to the first, we cannot conceive how a spirit can receive any sensations or ideas from corporeal objects, without its particular union to some certain body by that God who created it. Since body and spirit are of such widely different natures, that it is impossible they should touch one another, a body cannot give notice to a soul to raise any idea or perception in it by a jog or shake of any kind.

Besides, when any particular body moves, can all spirits perceive it? No surely. Or can any one spirit receive sensations from the motions of all bodies in the world? By no means. Either of these is a most extravagant fancy, contrary to all experience. It is evident, that one particular soul receives sensations immediately from one particular animal body, and from that alone: Other bodies can impress no immediate sensations or ideas on that spirit.* Now why is it only from this one

*I do not pretend to determine here, that it is not possible, in the nature of things, for one soul to be conscious of the motions of two, or of twenty bodies;

body, that this one spirit can receive impressions or sensations? The soul did not chuse this body to make itself conscious of its motions; much less doth the body chuse this soul to impress sensations on it: Nor can it be resolved into any thing but the will and appointment of the great God their common Creator, who made this soul and this body, and united them into

a man.

V. We are in the next place then to enquire, what is meant by the union of a spirit to a particular body, or wherein doth it

consist.

When we say a spirit is united to an animal body, this doth not mean mutual touching of each other; for, as we said before, this is impossible. Tangere vel tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res. Lucretius is here in the right: But the chief thing wherein this union between an individual human body and an individual spirit consists, so far as we can find it, lies in these two laws or appointments of God our Creator.

1. That when some particular impressions are made, or particular motions are excited in that part of that individual body which is called the sensory, whether they arise within itself, or are conveyed from the outward organs of sense, or any other parts of body by means of the nerves, God hatli powerfully ordained, that that individual spirit shall have such particular perceptions or sensations, or such ideas of outward objects.

2. That when that spirit wills to raise such a particular motion in the limbs, or in such parts of the body as God hath subjected to voluntary motion, he hath powerfully ordained that such a motion shall be presently excited by the means of the nerves or muscles in those limbs or those parts, upon the mere volition of of the soul; for we have no knowledge of any other executive power that does this: All that we are conscious of is, that the soul wills, and the body moves. In these two things chiefly consists the union of soul and body.

VI. Here it may be proper to observe, that there is some particular part of that body, which may be called as it were the common sensory, or the palace of the soul; not where she resides, as in a proper place, (as will appear hereafter) but where she receives immediate notices of things that relate to the body, and where she hath more immediate influence in moving the nerves and muscles, which serve to move the limbs and moveable parts

nor do I know that the nature of things forbids two or more souls to receive sensations from one body. E ther of these, for ought I know, is very possible, if God please to appoint it. All that I maintain here is, that this is not the present course of nature, or settled order of things in our world; and much less have souls or bodies any such original innate power in themselves to hold immediate or reciprocal communications with multitudes.

*

of the body. Now this is evidently the brain, or some special part of the brain, which appears from these three things eminently.

1st. Because all the nerves, whose extremities are wrought into the several organs of sense, viz. the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue and palate, have their spring or origin in the brain ; and the nerves which subserve the general sense of feeling, and which are spread through all the body, have their origin there also: And thus when the outward extremity, or other end of those nerves, is moved or affected any way, the motion is communicated immediately to the inward origin of them in the brain, to give notice of all things that affect the outward or any distinct parts of the body, whether they be shapes, motions, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heats, colds, &c. And it is by means of these nerves also, which have their origin in the brain, that every extreme part of the body is put into motion at the will or command of the soul. It seems proper therefore to suppose the soul to have its more immediate government and operations near the origin of the nerves, which are so much the instruments of its perceptions and operations. Now, to confirm this by experiment, I add,

2dly, If any of the limbs are cut or bruised, while there is a ligament tied so hard round the limb, that there can be no communication of that motion by the nerves to the brain, the soul feels it not, the man bath no perception or sensation of it. And if the nerves which go from the brain to any limb are cut, the will cannot make that limb move.

3dly, When we set ourselves to think or study, we feel and are conscious that we employ some operative power or powers within the scull, and perhaps generally a little within the forehead : And the reason why we feel it there is, because the corporeal motions and traces are there formed, and preserved, and renewed, which serve to raise or awaken ideas in the mind, and which are ordained to minister to the soul in its intellectual or sensitive operations while it is in this united state.

VII. The perceptions which a spirit has by means of its union with the body in, this present state, are chiefly of these three kinds.

1. Such as have no external objects for their exemplar, nor do they so much as seem to want any; for they are not represen tations of objects, but mere sensations of the soul: Such are hunger, thirst, pleasure, ease, pain, and in general our appetites and passions. Though some of these, viz. ease, pain, &c. may

*Des Cartes and his followers supposed this common sensory was the PinealGland, which is situated almost in the middle of the brain; and some of their reasons for it are not contemptible, though I can by no means confine the sensory to such narrow limits.

be occasioned by outward objects, yet we are in no great danger here of making a false judgment about them, and of imagining that these perceptions have any resemblance to those outward objects which are the causes or occasions of them. No man thinks there is pain in the sword that wounds him and gives him pain. Pleasure and pain appear to be mere sensations, rather than proper ideas; yet it is granted we can form an idea of them afterward, by considering what those sensations are, or by reflecting on what we feel? and thence we gain the ideas of hunger, thirst, pain, pleasure, &c. which very sensations are the exemplars or patterns of those ideas.

2. Another sort of perceptions which we obtain by union with the body, are such as seem to be proper ideas rather than mere sensations, yet they have no real objects without, which are the proper exemplars of those ideas; there is no outward being which those ideas are like, and yet they seem to represent some outward originals or exemplars, and we are ready to suppose they have something from without that resembles them :Such are the secondary and sensible qualities of bodies, viz. colours, sounds, tastes, smells, cold, heat, &c. These have been abundantly proved by philosophers not to have any real existence in outward objects, such as we perceive them; and though we generally call them ideas because they seem to represent outward objects, yet really they are mere sensations which the God of nature has ordained to arise in us on occasion of some motions, strokes and impressions, which outward objects raise or form upon our organs of sense, and which are thence conveyed to the brain or common sensory. See Mr. Locke's excellent discourse on that subject, Essay, book II. chap. 8.

It is granted here, that the bulk or vulgar part of mankind are deceived in passing a rash judgment, that there are such qualities in outward objects as resemble these ideas in the mind; yet there is no inconvenience to human life arising from this mistake; for all the valuable purposes in life are answered by these sensations, since we have sufficient notice thereby what objects are the causes of them, whether these objects are real outward exemplars of them, and do resemble them or not. If I know that wormwood will give me a bitter taste, and a bell will make a tinkling sound, I can judge as well how or when to use wormword or a bell, while I lie under this mistake, and while I suppose the wormwood itself to have the bitterness in it, and the bell itself to have the sound in it, as if I believed this sound and this bitterness to be only sensations in my mind, of which the bell and the wormwood are the causes or occasions. And as for persons of science and enquiry, there are ways and means of experiment and reasoning, whereby they may find out, and have actually found out this vulgar mistake; and they are or may be convinced