Considerations of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul, with…

1. The sympathy of things is no convincing Argument that they are of the same Nature. There may be so strict a union of Beings of different natures, that they must necessarily be subject to impressions from one another. Can any Reasons demonstrate that a Spiritual substance endowed with the powers of understanding and ⟨p. 165⟩will, cannot be united in a vital composition to a Body, as the Vegetative Soul is in Plants, and the Sensitive in Beasts? There is no implicit repugnance in this that proves it impossible. Now if such a complex Being were in Nature, how would that spiritual Soul act in that Body, that in its first union with it (excepting some universal Principles) is a rasa tabula, as a white Paper, without the notices of things written in it? Certainly in no other imaginable manner than as Man's Soul does now.

1. The sympathy of things is no convincing Argument that they are of the same Nature. There may be so strict a union of Beings of different natures, that they must necessarily be subject to impressions from one another. Can any Reasons demonstrate that a Spiritual substance endowed with the powers of understanding and ⟨p. 165⟩will, cannot be united in a vital composition to a Body, as the Vegetative Soul is in Plants, and the Sensitive in Beasts? There is no implicite repugnance in this that proves it impossible. Now if such a complex Being were in Nature, how would that spiritual Soul act in that Body, that in its first union with it (excepting some universal Principles) is a rasa tabula, as a white Paper, without the notices of things written in it? Certainly in no other imaginable manner than as Man's Soul does now.

Indeed if Man as compounded of Soul and Body, were a sensitive Animal, and only rational as partaking of the Universal Intellect, bent to individuals for a time, and retiring at Death to its first Being, as Averroes fancied▪ there would be no cause of such a Sympathy: ⟨p. 166⟩