358 Or SUBSTANCE, BODY AND SPIRIT. it had before : Destroy roundness, and the body ceases to be a bowl, but it is bodyor matter still ; destroy the peculiar essential mode (whatever it be) that distinguishes a human spirit from all other spirits, and yet it is a spirit still, though it ceases to be a human spirit. But the case is not so with solid extension and a thinking power ; for if you destroy these, there is nothing at all remains, notso much as an idea ; and therefore I think they are not so properly mere essential modes, but they are substances themselves. I know it will be objected here, that though we should grant solid extension to be a substance, yet we cannot suppose a think- ing power to be a substance also; a power must have some sub- stance to inhere in, and extension or expansion belongs to all substances whatsoever; and it is probable that extension void of solidity is the substratum of the thinking powers of a spirit. But may it not be replied, that we have used ourselves so much in logic to conceive power as a mode or property, that it is harder perhaps for scholars than it is for others to drop this pre- judice. Yet in common language among heathens or christians, the heavenly powers, or the powers above, signify God, or Gods, or angels ; and the scripture uses this language, for it often calls angelsprincipalities and powers, Eph. vi. 12. Col. i. 16. and ii. 16. 1 Pet. iii. 22. And as for supposing some extension to be the substance or substratum of every thinking power, I grant we are so tied down by constant and familiar ideas of body to length, breadth, and depth, that we are ready to imagine there can be no being without it. We may allow therefore, say the Cartesians, we may allow young philosophers to keep their ideas of extension toge- ther with their ideas of a thinking power, until they have pro- ceeded to search farther into the nature and actions of a spirit, and to converse about the understanding and will, and their operations; and they will find by degrees, that this extensioncan do nothing toward thinking, nor is of any use in. all their re- searches into the world of spirits ; they will find that it is a foreign idea tied on to a thinking power by mere custom; and they will perhaps insensibly, drop it by degrees, when they find no use of it in philosophizing upon.spirits. I say, this idea ofextension is tied on tothe idea of a soul by custom, rather than by pure nature. A poor young creature in the lowest rank of life being once asked, what she supposed her soul to be ; after a little musing replied, my soul is my think ; whereby it is plain she meant her power of thinking. And I believe the greatest part of mankind if they were asked the same question, would sooner and more readily, reply that it is some- thing in them that enables them to think, speak, move, and gives them the power of thought and action, than they would say, it slog any thing long, broad or deep.
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