866 LOGIC : OR, THE RIGHT USE OE REASON, Our elder philosophers have generally made use of theword soul to signify that principle whereby a plant grows, and they called it the vegetative soul: the principle of the animal motion at a brute has been likewse called a soul, and we have been taught to name it the sensitive soul: they have also given the name seul to that superior principle in man, whereby he thinks, judges, reasons, &c. and though they distinguish this by the honourable title of the rational soul, yet in common discourse and writing we leave out the words vegetative, sensitive, and rational ; and snake the word soul serve for all these principles : thence we are led early into this imagination, that there is a sort of spiritual being in plants and in brutes, like that in men. Whereas if we did but abstract and separate these things from words, and com- pare the cause of growth in a plant, with the cause of reasoning in man (without the word soul) we should never think that these two principles were at all like one another ; nor should we per- haps so easily and peremptorily conclude, that brutes need an in- telligent mind to perform their animal actions. Another instance may be the word LIFE, which being attri- buted to plants, to brutes, and to men, and in each of them ascrib- ed to the soul, has very easily betrayed us from our infancy into this mistake, " that the spirit or mind, or thinking principle, in man, is the spring of vegetative and animal life to his body :" whereas it is evident, that if the spirit or thinking principle of man gave life to his animal nature, the way to save men from dying would not be to use medicines, but to persuade the spirit to abide in the body. I might derive a third instance from the word lIEAT, which is used to signify the sensation we have when we are near the fire, as well as the cause of that sensation, which is in the fire itself ; and thence we conclude from our infancy, that there is a sort of heat in the fire resembling our own sensation, or the heat which we feel: whereas in the fire there is nothing but little particles of matter, of such particular shapes, sizes, situations and motions, as are fitted to impress such motion on our flesh or nerves as ex- cite the sense of heat. Now if this cause of our sensation in the fureJsad been always called by a distinct name, perhaps we had not been so rooted in this mistake, that the fire is hot with the same sort of heat that we feel. This will appear wills more evidence, when we consider that we are secure from the saine mistake where there have been two different naines allotted to our sensation, and to the cause of it ; as, we do not say, pain is in the fire that burns us, or in the knife that cuts and wounds us; for we call it burning in the fire, cutting in the knife, and pain only when it is in ourselves. Numerous instances of this kind might be derived from the words sweet, sour, load, shrill, and almost all the sensible quali-
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