410 OF TUE PLACE AND MOTION OF SPIRITS. are broken, the soul ceases to be conscious of the presence of body, and of all properties of body, of place, motion, distance from, or proximity to any body whatsoever ; for it cannot be conscious of bodies, nor proximity to them, but by the agency of those bodies upon it and exciting sensations in it; but no bodies can act upon a separate spirit, without a new divine appointment, nor excite in it any sensation. Yet you will reply, May not the soul be among bodies and near to them, though it be not conscious of it ? And I reply also, By no means ; for whatsoever hath proxi- mity to any body, may have a greater and greater proximity, till at last it touch, or till its surface be united to the surfaceof that body ; but this we have proved to be utterly contrary to the na- ture of a spirit, viz. to have any shape or surface. I come now to answer the .second part of the dilemma, and that is, that if a spirit exists no where, it has no existence. This is a mighty cannon played upon me from among the an- cient artillery of axioms, viz. Quod nullibi est non est, that which is no where, has no being. But since this axiom is not evident enough to be granted, I think it can never be proved; and since it is borrowed merely from the world of sense and matter, it does not affect the doctrine of minds or spirits, which are thinking powers, and whose essence and life consists in per- petual conscious activity. This corporeal maxim can do no more execution here, than a cannon ball would do on anarmy of angels ; for though a body cannot bewithout being some where, yet a spirit, which is aconscious active power,' may have a real existence, and yet have noproper place; that is, may re- side or be situated no where in the sense I have explained it, i. e. lave noproximity of situation to bodies, or fill up no sup- posed dimensions of space. It is certain, that the forms of speech in all languages are drawn from our converses with corporeal and sensible things round about us, which require locality, or a proper place to exist iu; and our words and phrases are not made for the world of spirits, but the world of bodies ; nor can theyso happily express the ideas that belong to spirits, as if we could speak of intellec- tual beings in their own proper language. And since our spirits in this present state are united to animal bodies, or act upon them, we borrow twenty forms of expression concerning our spirits, which originally and properly belong only to bodies; and being trained up from our infancy to this sort of language, we are ready to imagine our souls to be some thin airy sort of bodies, as the soul is pourtrayed, as I remember in Commenius's. Pictus Orbis, which I learnt at school. We supposespirits to have a subtle sort of extension and figure, and to require a place to exist in as much as bodies. Nor is it possible, nor is it need-
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