A26976:139
Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits.…
Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits. Two discourses, one in a letter to an unknown doubter, the other in a reply to Dr. Henry Moore's Animadversions on a private letter to him, which he published in his second edition of Mr. Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus triumphatus, or, History of apparitions by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for B. Simons, 1682
OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS: › Section 12-13: Ad SECT. XII, XIII.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§ 2. Your 13. Section is strange. 1. You say Penetrability and indivisibility are not accidents at all, no more than Rationale of a man. Ans. Anima rationalis is forma hominis in the strict proper sense of Forma as an Active Principle. Indivisible is a Negative, and it and Penetrable are the consistency or mode of the Substance ⟨p. 61⟩(or, as you call it, Matter:) As Amplitude, Quantity, Spissitude, Dimensions, Locality are by you said to be, which are called Forms in another sense, as the passive Elements differ from each other. But the Principium Activum being the true and only Form of a Spirit, these modalities and Consistencies are but conditio materiae, as you call it, or Substantiae as I call it, as to the Form. Yet that Dispositio materiae is Essential I have asserted.
§ 3. And yet though all along I deny not your two words to be the conditio omnis Substantiae spiritualis (joined with more) I still tell you that difficulties make me not lay so much on them as you do. To add one more, As I told you Quality is penetrable; as well as Spirit, e. g. heat, so yet though we commonly say, it is indivisible, I wish you would solve this Objection: You prove the locality of Spirits by their operation on this or that Body, (And doubtless you may well prove that the Recipient body is in loco, and consequently the Agent relatively.) But how shall we avoid the division of Qualities or Spirits ex divisione materiae subjectivae. E. g. If a red hot Iron be penetrated by the heat, yet if this Iron be cut in two, while hot, and each part set (per potentiam superiorem) ⟨p. 62⟩at 20 Miles distance. is not the heat divided with the Iron? So if a mans Head be struck off, and (by such a quick mover as you think moveth the Earth) the Head in a moment were carried far off, while both parts of the Body are yet alive, is not the Soul in each part? And if the Parts were 20 or 100 Miles a sunder, is it still one undivided Soul?