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

material soul is no otherwise impressible itself, but as material organs are. Instances of this kind are endless. (See section III, proposition XIII.)

If we know anything of matter, we know that by itself it is a lifeless thing⁠—inert, and passive only⁠—and acts necessarily (or rather is acted) according to the laws of motion and gravitation. This passiveness seems to be essential to it. And if we know anything of ourselves, we know that we are conscious of our own existence and acts (i.e. that we live), that we have a degree of freedom, that we can move ourselves spontaneously, and, in short, that we can, in many instances, take off the effect of gravitation and impress new motions upon our spirits (or give them new directions) only by a thought. Therefore, to make mere matter do all this is to change the nature of it: to change death into life, incapacity of thinking into cogitativity, necessity into liberty. And to say that God may superadd a faculty of thinking, moving itself, etc. to matter⁠—if by this be meant that he may make matter to be the suppositum of these faculties (that substance, in which they inhere)⁠—is the same in effect as to say that God may superadd a faculty of thinking to incogitativity, of acting freely to necessity, and so on. What sense is there in this? And yet so it must be, while matter continues to be matter.

That faculty of thinking, so much talked of by some as superadded to certain systems of matter, fitly disposed, by virtue of God’s omnipotence, though it be so called, must in reality amount to the same thing as another substance with the faculty of thinking. For a faculty of thinking alone will not make up the idea of a human soul, which is endowed with many faculties⁠—apprehending, reflecting, comparing, judging, making deductions and reasoning, willing, putting the body in motion, continuing the animal functions by its presence, and giving life⁠—and therefore, whatever it is that is superadded, it must be something which is endowed with all those other faculties. And whether that can be a faculty of thinking, and so these other faculties be only faculties of a faculty,579 or whether they must not all be rather the faculties of some substance,580 which, being (by their own concession) superadded to matter, must be different from it, I do leave the unprejudiced to determine.

If men would but seriously look into themselves, I am persuaded the soul would not appear to them as a faculty of the body, or kind of appurtenance to it, but rather as some substance, properly placed in it, not only to use it as an instrument, and act by it, but also to govern it (or the parts of it; as the tongue, hands, feet, etc.) according to its own reason. For I think it is plain enough that the mind, though it acts under great limitations, does however in many instances govern the body arbitrarily⁠—and it is monstrous to suppose this governor to be nothing but some fit disposition or accident (superadded) of that matter which is governed. A ship, it is true, would not be fit for navigation if it was not built and provided in a proper manner, but then, when it has its proper form, and is become a system of materials fitly disposed, it is not this disposition that governs it. It is the man⁠—that other substance⁠—who sits at the helm, and they who manage the sails and tackle, that do this. So our vessels, without a proper organization and conformity of parts, would not be capable of being acted as they are; but still it is not the shape, or modification, or any other accident, that can govern them. The capacity of being governed or used can never be the governor applying and using581 that capacity. No, there must be at the helm something distinct that commands the body, and without which it would run adrift, or rather sink.

For the foregoing reasons, it seems to me that matter cannot think; cannot be made to think. But if a faculty of thinking can be superadded to a system of matter, without uniting an immaterial substance to it582⁠—I say, if this can be, yet a human body is not such a system: being plainly void of thought, and organized in such a manner as to transmit the impressions of sensible objects up to the brain, where the percipient, and that which reflects upon them, certainly resides; and therefore that, which there apprehends, thinks, and wills, must be that system of matter to which a faculty of thinking is superadded. All the premises then well considered, judge I beseech you whether instead of saying that this inhabitant of our heads (the soul) is a system of matter to which a faculty of thinking is superadded, it might not be more reasonable to say, it is “a thinking substance intimately united to some fine material vehicle, which has its residence in the brain.” Though I understand not perfectly the manner how a cogitative and spiritual substance can be thus closely united to such a material vehicle, yet I can understand this union as well, as how it can be united to the body in general (perhaps, as how the particles of the body itself cohere together), and much better than how a thinking faculty can be superadded to matter. And besides, several phenomena may more easily be solved by this hypothesis, which (though I shall not pertinaciously maintain it) in short is this: viz. that the human soul is a cogitative substance, clothed in a material vehicle, or rather united to it, and as it were inseparably mixed (I had almost said “incorporated”) with it;583 that these act in conjunction, that which affects the one affecting the other; that the soul is detained in the body (the