i9d THE I'tWVEMENfi Cie THE MIND. Peripateties, and imagines certain immaterial beings, called sub- stantial forms, to inhabit every herb, flower, mineral, Metal; Are, water, íße. and to he the spring of all its properties and operations ; or take a Platonist who believes an anima mundi, an universal soul of the world to pervade all bodies, to act in and by them according to their nature, and indeed to give them their dattire and their special powers; perhaps it may be very hard to convince these persons by arguments, and constrain them to yield up these fancies. Well then, let the one believe his universal soul, and the other go on with his notion of substantial forms, and at the saine time teach them how by certain original Ian's of motion, and the various sizes, shapes, and situations of the parts of matter, allowing a continued divine concourse in and with all, the several appearances in nature may be solved, and the variety of effects produced, according to the corpuscular philosophy, improved by Des Cartes, Mr. Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton ; and when they have attained a degree of skill in this science, they will see these airy notions of theirs, these imagi- nary powers, to be so useless and unnecessary, that they will drop them of their own accord ; the Peripatetic forms will vanish from the mind like a dream, and the Platonic soul of the world will expire. Or suppose a young philosopher under a powerful persua= lion, that there is nothing but what' has three dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness, and consequently that every finitebeing has a figure or shape, (for shape is but the term and boundary of dithensions:) suppose this person, through the long preju= dices of sense and imagination, cannot be easily brought to con- ceive of a spirit, or a thinking being without shape and ditnen-. sions; let him then continue to conceive a spirit with dimen- sions ; but be sure in all his conceptions to retain the idea of cogitation or apower of thinking, and thus proceed to phileso- phize upon the subject. Perhaps in a little timehe will find that length, breadth and shape, have no share in any of the actions of a spirit ; and that he can manifest all the properties and rela- tions of such a being, with all its operations of sensation, voli tion, &c. to be as well performed without the use of this sup- posed shape or these dimensions; and that all these operations and these attributes maybe ascribed to a spirit, considered merely as a power of thinking. And when he further conceives that God, the infinite spirit, is an almighty, self-existing, thinking power, without shape and dimensions of length, breadth and depth, he may then suppose the human spirit may be an inferior self -subsisting power of thought ; and he may be inclined to drop the ideas of dimension and figure by degrees, when he sees and is convinced they do nothing towards thinking, nor are they ne- cessary to assist or explain the operations or properties of a spirit.
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