The Living Temple

And yet that particular reason seems a great deal more pious, than it is cogent; which he gives for his choosing this particular way of differencing brutes from humane creatures, viz. lest any prejudice should be done to the doctrine of the humane souls immortality: There being nothing, as he truly says, that doth more easily turn off weak minds from the path of virtue, than if they should think the souls of brutes to be of the same nature with our own; and therefore that nothing remains to be hoped or feared after this life, more by us than by flies or pismires. For, sure there were other ways of providing against that danger; besides that of denying them so much as sense (other than merely organical as he somewhere alleviates the harshness of that position, but ⟨p. 90⟩¹without telling us what use's these organs) and the making them nothing else but well formed machines.

And yet that particular reason seems a great deal more pious, than it is cogent; which he gives for his chusing this particular way of differencing brutes from humane creatures, viz. lest any prejudice should be done to the doctrine of the humane souls immortality: There being nothing, as he truly says, that doth more easily turn off weak minds from the path of virtue, than if they should think the souls of brutes to be of the same nature with our own; and therefore that nothing remains to be hoped or feared after this life, more by us than by flies or pismires. For, sure there were other ways of providing against that danger; besides that of denying them so much as sense (other than meerly organical as he somewhere alleviates the harshness of that position, but ⟨p. 90⟩¹without telling us what use's these organs) and the making them nothing else but well formed machines.

1. 1Resp. sextae.