ESSAY VI. 411 fnl in our way of common discourse, toalter our language and change the form of our expressions concerning spirits which are borrowed from corporeal things, provided when we come to phi- losophise more accurately about them, we do not explain them in a consistency with the natureOf spirits. Let us see then whether we, cannot in a philosophical manner declare what is the Ubi or Whereness of a spirit, and account for the common expressions of a spirit's existence in such a place, and its motion from place to place. SECT. V. The Ubi or Whereness of a Spirit.. SPIRITS, in common and familiar language, are said to be and to have their existence or residence in or near those parts dmatter on which they exert their immediate activity, or where- soever theyhave an immediate consciousness. This is properly their ubi or whereness. So my soul is said to be inmy body, or united to this body of mine, because it is conscious ofthe motions or impressions made on my body, and has many sensations and imaginations by the means or occasions of this flesh and blood, and because it acts upon or moves this animal engine ; whereas it is not conscious of the motions or impressions of other bodies, nor does it act upon them or move them as it does my own. And this is the proper notion of the spirit's union to a body, (viz.) that though my soul has in its own nature, and merely of itself, no consciousness of, or power of agency upon, any particle of matter ; yet the great God, the father ofspirits, has appointed my soul to be thus conscious of some motions of my body, and to have some power of agency upon it': He has given my soul this individual animal machine, this appointed sphere or station of my body, from which to receive sensations, and iu which to excite motions. Now for this reasonmy soul is said to move where my body moves, and to dwell where my body dwells, because its power of immediate consciousness and activity are confined to this animal body of mine. 'r'he body being the gross and visible engine whereby all our human affairs and transactions are carried on, and the soul, the activeagent being invisible, we speak of every thing that the man does in language suited to his body rather than to his soul; men generally supposing the soul to be a kind ofappen- dix or superadded principle to the body ; whereas in philosophi- cal truth, the body is rather the appendix or instrument of the soul. But it is proper for us still to conform to the common lan- guage of the world in speaking of these subjects, just as the most exquisite astronomers speak of the sun-rising and sun -set ting, and the motion of the sun and the fixed stars, though they knowthat the sun abides in the centre of the planetaryworld, and the fixed stars have no motion, and that the earth and the other
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