farily confined to fome particular place, and which it obliges to change its place at plea fure. How thefe notions ftrike others I cannot tell; to me nothing can appear more whimfical, or extravagant.

PART II.

Of the MUTUAL INFLUENCES of the Soul and the Body.

IT is contended for by all metaphyficians, who maintain the doctrine of any proper immaterial principle, that fpirit and body can have no common property; and when it is afked how, then, can they act upon one another, and how can they be fo intimately connected as to be continually and neceffarily fubject to each other's influence, it is acknowledged to be a difficulty, and a mystery that we cannot comprehend. But had this question been confidered with due attention, what has been called a difficulty would, I doubt not, have been deemed an impoffibility; or fuch a mystery as that of the bread and wine in the Lord's fupper becoming the real body and blood of Chrift, or that of each of the three persons in the Trinity being equally God, and yet there being no more Gods than one; which, in the eye of common fenfe, are not properly difficulties, or myfteries, but direct contradictions;

fuch

fuch as that of a thing being and not being at the fame time.

Let a man torture his imagination as much as he pleases, I will pronounce it to be impoffible for him to conceive even the poffibility of mutual action without fome common property, by means of which the things that act and re-act upon each other, may have some connexion. A fubftance that is hard may act upon, and be acted upon by, another hard substance, or even one that is foft, which, in fact, is only relatively less hard: but it is certainly impoffible that it should affect, or be affected by, a fubftance that can make no refiftance at all, and especially a kind of fubftance that cannot, with any propriety of fpeech, be faid to be even in the fame place with it. If this be not an impoffibility, I really do not know what is fo.

But admitting that what appears to me to be an abfolute impoffibility, viz. that fubftances which have no common property can, nevertheless, affect, and be affected by, each. other, to be no more than a difficulty; it is however a difficulty of fuch magnitude, as. far to exceed that of conceiving that the principle of fenfation may poffibly confift with matter; and, therefore, if, of two difficulties, it be most philofophical to take the least, we muft, of course, abandon the hypothesis of two heterogeneous and incompatible principles in man, which is clogged with the greater difficulty of conception, and admit that of the

uniformity of his nature, which is only attended with a lefs difficulty.

The great difficulty that attends the fuppofition of the union of the foul and body, came in with the Cartefian hypothefis, which goes upon the idea that the effence of mind is thought, and the effence of body extenfion, exclusive of every property that had before been fuppposed to be common to them both, and by which they might influence one another. And it is very amusing to observe the different hypothefes that have been formed to account for the foul receiving ideas by the corporeal fenfes, and for the motion of the body in confequence of the volition of the foul.

That the body and mind have no phyfical influence upon one another, Defcartes could not but allow. He therefore fuppofed that the impreffion of external objects, was only the occafional, and not the efficient caufe of fenfation in the mind; that volition also was only the occafional, and not the efficient cause of the motion of the mufcles; and that in both these cafes the real efficient caufe was the immediate agency of the Deity, exerted according to certain rules which he invariably followed. Thus whenever an object is prefented, the divine Being impreffes the mind, and whenever a volition takes place, he produces the corresponding motion in the mufcular fyftem.

Malebranche refined upon this hypothefis, supposing that we perceive the ideas of things

not

not only by the divine agency, but in the divine mind itself; all ideas being firft in the divine mind, and there perceived by us. A general view of his fyftem, with the reasons on which it is founded, is thus given by Lord Bolingbroke. See his Works, vol. iii. p.

543.

"We cannot perceive any thing that is "not intimately united to the foul; but there being no proportion between the foul and "material things, these cannot be united to it,

or perceived by it. Our fouls are, indeed, "united to our bodies, but there is a manner "of union neceffary to perception, and an"other that is not fo. God, who is a fub"ftance, and the only intelligible fubftance, "is intimately united to our fouls by his prefence. He is the place of Spirits, as Space is the place of bodies; and as he "must have in himself the ideas of all the "beings that he has created, we may fee "those ideas in God, as he is pleased to shew "them to us.

The celebrated mathematician and metaphyfician, Leibnitz, was as fenfible of the impoffibility of all proper connection, or influence, between matter and fpirit, as the Cartefians, but he explained the correfpondence there is between them in quite another, though not a more fatisfactory, manner; form-: ing a fyftem, which has obtained the name of the pre-established harmony. For, admitting the neceffary and phyfical operation of all causes,

1

caufes, mental and corporeal, he fuppofe's that the whole train of volitions, from a man's birth to his death, would have taken place in the mind in the fame order, if there had been no body connected with it; and, on the other hand, that all the motions, and other affections of the body (being properly an automaton) would have been the fame, if there had been no foul connected with it: but that it is pre-established by the divine Being, that the volitions of the one, and the motions of the other, should strictly correfpond, just as they would have done, if they had really been cause and effect to each other.

Neither of these hypothefes having given lafting fatisfaction, the defenders of the modern doctrine of immateriality have generally contented themselves with fuppofing that there is fome unknown real influence between the foul and the body, but that the connection is a mystery to us. And this is not the firft abfurdity, and impoffibility, that has found a convenient shelter under under that term.

The learned Beaufobre acknowledges this difficulty, even with respect to the Deity himfelf, but he gives us no affiftance with refpect to the solution of it. If," fays he, vol. i. p. 483, "the fubftance of the first mover "be abfolutely immaterial, without exten"fion, and without fize(grandeur) one cannot "conceive how it fhould give motion to mat→ ter; because fuch a fubftance can have no

"hold