A26976:278
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
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.
I am apt to believe those rare Endowments, and eminent Faculties, wherewith men seem to excel mere Sensitives, are only the improvement of Speech, wherein we have the advantage of them, and the result of reiterated Acts, until they ⟨p. 14⟩become habits. For by the first we are able to communicate our Conceptions and Experiments each to other; and by the other we do gradually ascend to the knowledge of things. For is all the knowledge either in the acts, Liberal or Mechanical, any more than this acts reiterated, until they become habits; which when they are, we are said to know them? And what is all our reasoning, but an Argument in Discourse tossed from one to another, till the Truth be found, like a Ball between two Rackets, till at last a lucky blow puts an end to the sport? We come into the World hardly men; and many whose natures want cultivation, live, having nothing to distinguish them from Brutes, but the outward form, speech, and some little dexterity, such as in Apes or Monkeys, in the things they have been taught, and the Affairs they have been bred to. And could we imagine any man to have lived Twenty or Thirty years in the World, without the benefit of Humane Converse, What would appear then, think you, of a rational Soul? which the wise man well saw when he asserted the Condition of Men and Beasts to be the same what a mere Ignorant hath; Moses himself made of Adam, that in his supposed ⟨p. 15⟩best state, knew not that he was naked: but I believe the Nine Hundred and Thirty years Experience of his own, and the continual Experiments of Posterity, in that time communicated to him, might quicken his Intellect. So that he died with more Reason than he was created, and humane nature in his posterity. The next Generation was embellished with his attainments, to which their own Experiences still made a new addition. The next Generation built on their Foundation, and the next on their; and so on: and we are got on the shoulders of them all. So that it's rather a wonder, that we know no more, than that we know so much. So that what we have, seems rather times product, through the means aforesaid, than what our Natures were at first enriched with.
I am apt to believe those rare Endowments, and eminent Faculties, wherewith men seem to excel meer Sensatives, are only the improvement of Speech, wherein we have the advantage of them, and the result of reiterated Acts, until they