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

Why does the scene of thinking lie in our heads, and all the ministers of sensation make their reports to something there, if all matter be apprehensive and cogitative? For in that case, there would be as much thought and understanding in our heels, and everywhere else, as in our heads.

If all matter be cogitative, then it must be so quatenùs matter, and thinking must be of the essence and definition of it; whereas, by “matter” no more is meant but a substance extended and impenetrable to other matter. And since, for this reason, it cannot be necessary for matter to think (because it may be matter without this property), it cannot think as matter only.

If it did, we should not only continue to think always, till the matter of which we consist is annihilated (and so the assertor of this doctrine would stumble upon immortality unawares), but we must also have thought always in time past, ever since that matter was in being; nor could there be any the least intermission of actual thinking, which does not appear to be our case.

If thinking, self-consciousness, etc. were essential to matter, every part of it must have them: and then no system could have them. For a system of material parts would be a system of things, conscious every one by itself of its own existence and individuality, and consequently thinking by itself: but there could be no one act of self-consciousness or thought common to the whole. Juxtaposition in this case could signify nothing; the distinction and individuation of the several particles would be as much retained in their vicinity as if they were separated by miles.

In the next place, the faculties of thinking, etc. cannot arise from the size, figure, texture, or motion of it, because bodies by the alteration of these only become greater or less; round or square, etc.; rare, or dense; translated from one place to another, with this or that new direction or velocity; or the like: all which ideas are quite different from that of thinking; there can be no relation between them.571 These modifications and affections of matter are so far from being principles or causes of thinking and acting, that they are themselves but effects, proceeding from the action of some other matter or thing upon it, and are proofs of its passivity, deadness, and utter incapacity of becoming cogitative. This is evident to sense.

They who place the essence of the soul in a certain motion given to some matter (if any such men there really be) should consider, among many other things, that to move the body spontaneously is one of the faculties of the soul,572 and that this, which is the same with the power of beginning motion, cannot come from motion already begun, and impressed ab extra.

Let the materialist examine well whether he does not feel something within himself that acts from an internal principle; whether he does not experience some liberty, some power of governing himself and choosing; whether he does not enjoy a kind of invisible empire, in which he commands his own thoughts, sends them to this or that place, employs them about this or that business,573 forms such and such designs and schemes; and whether there is anything like this in bare matter,574 however fashioned or proportioned, which, if nothing should protrude or communicate motion to it, would forever remain fixed to the place where it happens to be, an eternal monument of its own being dead. Can such an active being as the soul is,575 the subject of so many powers, be itself nothing but an accident?

When I begin to move myself, I do it for some reason, and with respect to some end, the means to effect which, I have, if there be occasion for it, concerted within myself: and this does not at all look like motion merely material (or, in which matter is only concerned), which is all mechanical. Who can imagine matter to be moved by arguments, or ever placed syllogisms and demonstrations among levers and pulleys?

We not only move ourselves upon reasons which we find in ourselves, but upon reasons imparted by words or writing from others, or perhaps merely at their desire or bare suggestion. In which case, again, nobody sure can imagine that the words spoken or written (the sound in the air, or the strokes on the paper) can by any natural or mechanical efficience cause the reader or hearer to move in any determinate manner (or at all). The reason, request, or friendly admonition, which is the true motive, can make no impression upon matter. It must be some other kind of being that apprehends the force and sense of them.

Do not we see in conversation how a pleasant thing said makes people break out into laughter, a rude thing into passion, and so on? These affections cannot be the physical effects of the words spoken, because then they would have the same effect whether they were understood or not. And this is further demonstrable from hence: that though the words do really contain nothing which is either pleasant, or rude (or perhaps words are thought to be spoken, which are not spoken), yet if they are apprehended to do that, or the sound to be otherwise than it was, the effect will be the same. It is therefore the sense of the words, which is an immaterial thing, that, by passing through the understanding and causing that which is the subject of the intellectual faculties to influence the body, produces these motions in the spirits, blood, muscles.

They who can fancy that matter may come to live, think, and act spontaneously⁠—by being reduced to a certain magnitude, or having its parts placed after a certain manner, or being invested with such a figure, or excited by such a particular motion⁠—they, I say, would