A26976:48
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.
For to tell you the truth, I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense, except the immediate sensation it self, & the acts of Intellection & Volition or Nolition, & what the Intellect inferreth of the like, by the perception of these. I have seen & felt how Water differeth from Earth, and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath: But without that seeing and feeling it, all the definitions in the world, and all the names of hard and soft, and dry and moist, would have given me no true notice of the formal difference. Now hence I infer, that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter; and therefore how can I know it? I know by knowing what knowing is, and by willing what willing is: And I know that these Acts prove a power (for nothing doth that which it cannot do,) and that Act and Power prove a Substance, (for ⟨p. 16⟩nothing hath nothing, and can do nothing:) ab est tertii▪ adjecti ad est secundi valet argumentum: And I know, that unless Light might be called Spirit, Spirits are to me invisible: And so I can knowingly say, 1. What they do, 2. What they can do, 3. What they are in the genus of Substantiality, 4. And what they are not as to many Attributes proper to Visible Substances or Bodies; 5. And I have elsewhere fully proved in a special Dispute (in Methodo Theol.) that the Power of Vital Action, Intellection and Volition, is not a mere Accident of them, but their very essential form. But as to that Modification of their Substance which is contrary to Impenetrability and Divisibility, I may grope, but I cannot know it positively, for want of sensation.
For to tell you the truth, I know nothing at all without the mediation of sense, except the immediate sensation it self, & the acts of Intellection & Volition or Nolition, & what the Intellect inferreth of the like, by the perception of these. I have seen & felt how Water differeth from Earth, and from that sensation my Intellect hath that Idea of the difference which it hath: But without that seeing and feeling it, all the definitions in the world, and all the names of hard and soft, and dry and moist, would have given me no true notice of the formal difference. Now hence I infer, that I have no sense at all of the difference of a Spirits Substantiality in such modes and accidents from that of Matter; and therefore how can I know it? I know by knowing what knowing is, and by willing what willing is: And I know that these Acts prove a power (for nothing doth that which it cannot do,) and that Act and Power prove a Substance, (for