Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/192

150 2. Whereas therefore we have defined a Spirit (I mean chiefly a created one) as well from those more absolute powers of Self-contraction and dilatation, as also from those relative faculties of Penetrating, moving and altering of the Matter; we will now set down the Objections made against them both.

And against the first it is objected, That it is impossible for the Mind of Man to imagine any Substance having a power of Self-dilatation and Contraction to be unextended, and that Extension cannot be imagined without diversity of parts, nor diversity of parts without a possibility of division or separation of them; because diversity of parts in any Substance supposes diversity of substances, and diversity of substances supposes independency of one another: from whence it will follow that Indivisibility is incompetible to a Spirit, which notwithstanding we have added in the Definition thereof.

I confess the Objection is very ingenious and set on home; but withall conceive that the difficulty is easily taken off, if we acknowledge some such thing to be in the nature of a Spirit as has been by thousands acknowledged in the nature of Intentional species. We will therefore represent the property of a Spirit in this Symbole or Hieroglyphick.

Suppose a Point of light from which rays out a luminous Orb according to the known principles of of Optics: This Orb of light does very much resemble the nature of a Spirit, which is diffus'd and extended, and yet indivisible. For wee'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of life to be indivisible, and yet to diffuse it self by a kind of circumscrib'd Omnipresency, as the Point of light is discernible in every point of the Luminous Sphere. And yet supposing that Central lucid Point indivisible, there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of light. For it is ridiculous to think by any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous rays from the shining Center, and keep them apart by themselves; as any man will acknowledge that does but carefully consider the nature of the thing we speak of.

Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this a Substance as well as a Quality. And indeed this Sphere of light it self, it not inhering in any Subject in the space it occupies, looks far more like a Substance then any Accident. And what we fancie unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours, that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly, is more rationally to be admitted in Spiritual substances, whose central essence spreads out into a Secondary substance, as the luminous rays are conceiv'd to shoot out from a lucid Point. From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection, viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependence upon the central Essence thereof, from which they flow, and in which they are radically contained; and therefore though there be an Extension of this whole substantial power, yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another, but the intire Substance, as well Secondary as Primary or Central, is indivisible.

3. But let us again cast our eye upon this lucid Point and radiant Orb we have made use of; It is manifest that those rays that are hindred from Rh