The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

gravitation, or by any motions already impressed upon them, the effects would be determined by rules of mechanism, and be necessary; the motion or rest of my hand would not attend upon my will and be alterable upon a thought at my pleasure. If, then, I have (as I am sensible I have) a power of moving my hand, in a manner which it would not move in by those laws that mere bodies already in motion or under the force of gravitation would observe, this motion depends solely upon my will, and begins there.559

VI. That, which in man, is the subject or suppositum of self-consciousness, thinks, and has the foresaid faculties, must be something different from his body or carcass.

For, first, he does not, I suppose, find himself to think, see, hear, etc. all over, in any part of his body, but the seat of cogitation and reflection he finds in his head;560 and the nerves, by which the knowledge of external objects is conveyed to him, all tend to the same place. It is plainly something which resides there,561 in the region of the brain, that by the mediation of these nerves governs the body and moves the parts of it (as by so many reins or wires),562 feels what is done to it, sees through the eyes, hears through the ears, etc.563

Upon amputation of a limb564 this thing (whatever it is) is not found to be diminished,565 nor any of its faculties lost. Its sphere of acting, while it is confined to the body, is only contracted, and part of its instrument lost. It cannot make use of that which is not, or which it has not.

If the eyes be shut, or the ears stopped, it cannot then see, or hear⁠—but remove the obstruction, and it instantly appears that the faculty by which it apprehends the impressions made upon the organs of sensation, remained all that while entire: and that so it might have done if the eyes, or ears, had never been opened again, or if the eyes had been out, or the ears quite disabled. This shows, in general, that when any sense or faculty seems to be impaired or lost⁠—by any bodily hurt, after a fever, or through age⁠—this does not come to pass because it is the body that perceives and has these faculties in itself, but because the body loses its instrumentality, and gives that which is the true subject of these faculties no opportunity of exerting them, or of exerting them well, though it retains them as much as in the case before, when the eyes or ears were only shut.566 Thus distinct are it and its faculties from the body and its affections. I will now call it the “soul.”

Again, as a man peruses and considers his own body, does it not undeniably appear to be something different from the considerer? And when he uses this expression “my body,” or “the body of me,” may it not properly be demanded: who is meant by “me,” or what “my” relates to? It cannot be the body itself; that cannot say of itself, “it is my body,” or “the body of me.” And yet this way of speaking we naturally fall into, from an inward and habitual sense of ourselves and what we are, even though we do not advert upon it.

What I mean is this: A man being supposed a person consisting of two parts⁠—soul and body⁠—the whole person may say of this or that part of him, “the soul of me” or “the body of me,” but if he was either all soul, or all body, and nothing else, he could not then speak in this manner, because it would be the same as to say “the soul of the soul,” or “the body of the body,” or “the I of me.” The pronoun therefore (in that saying “my body,” or “the body of me”) must stand for something else, to which the body belongs,567 or at least for something of which it is only a part, viz. the person of the whole man.568 And then even this implies that there is another part of him, which is not body.

It is plain there are two different interests in men569⁠—on the one side reason, on the other passion⁠—which, being many times directly opposite, must belong to different subjects. There are, upon many occasions, contests and, as it were, wars between the mind and the body: so far are they from being the same thing.

Lastly, there is, we may perceive, something within us which supports the body (keeps it up), directs its motion for the better preservation of it when any hurts or evils befall it, finds out the means of its cure, and the like; without which, it would fall to the ground and undergo the fate of common matter. The body, therefore, must be considered as being under the direction and tuition of some other thing, which is (or should be) the governor of it, and consequently upon this account must be concluded to be different from it.

VII. The soul cannot be mere matter. For if it is, then either all matter must think, or the difference must arise from the different modification, magnitude, figure, or motion570 of some parcels of matter in respect of others, or a faculty of thinking must be superadded to some systems of it which is not superadded to others. But,

In the first place, that position which makes all matter to be cogitative is contrary to all the apprehensions and knowledge we have of the nature of it; nor can it be true, unless our senses and faculties be contrived only to deceive us. We perceive not the least symptom of cogitation or sense in our