Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/57

Rh the Existence of the thing it self, there will be no such thing as a Body lest in the world, and then will all be Spirit, or nothing. For who can frame so safe a notion of a Body, as to free himself from the intanglements than the Extension thereof will bring along with it? For this extended Matter consists of either indivisible points, or of particles divisible in infinitum. Take which of these two you will, (and you can find no third) you will be wound into the most notorious Absurdities that may be. For if you say it consists of points, from this position I can necessarily demonstrate, that every Spear or Spire-Steeple, or what long body you will, is as thick as it is long; that the tallest Cedar is not so high as the lowest Mushrome; and that the Moon and the Earth are so near one another, that the thickness of your hand will not goe betwixt; that Rounds and Squares are all one Figure; that Even and Odde Numbers are Equall one with another; and that the clearest Day is as dark as the blackest Night, And if you make choice of the other Member of the Disjunction, your Fancy will be little better at ease; for nothing can be divisible into parts it has not: therefore if a Body be divisible into infinite parts, it has infinite extended parts: and if it has an infinite number of extended parts, it cannot be but a hard mysterie to the Imagination of Man, that infinite extended parts should not amount to one whole infinite Extension. And thus a grain of Mustard-seed would be as well infinitely extended as the whole Matter of the Universe, and a thousandth part of that grain as well as the grain it self. Which things are more unconceivable then any thing in the Notion of a Spirit. Therefore we are not scornfully and contemptuously to reject any Notion, for seeming at first to be clouded and obscured with some difficulties and intricacies of conception; sith that of whose being we seem most assured, is the most intangled and perplex'd in the conceiving, of any thing that can be propounded to the apprehension of a Man. But here you will reply, that our Senses are struck by so manifest impressions from the Matter, that though the nature of it be difficult to conceive, yet the Existence is palpable to us by what it acts upon us. Why then, all that I desire is this, that when you shall be re-minded of some Actions and Operations that arrive to the notice of your Sense or Understanding, which, unless we do violence to our Faculties, we can never attribute to Matter or Body, that then you would not be so nice and averse from the admitting of such a Substance as is called a Spirit, though you fancy some difficulty in the conceiving thereof.

3. But for mine own part, I think the nature of a Spirit is as conceivable and easy to be defined as the nature of any thing else. For as for the very Essence or bare Substance of any thing whatsoever, he is a very Novice in speculation that does not acknowledge that utterly unknowable; but for the Essentiall and Inseparable Properties, they are as intelligible and explicable in a Spirit as in any other Subject whatever. As for example, I conceive the intire Idea of a Spirit in generall, or at least of all finite created and subordinate Spirits, to consist of these several powers or properties, viz. Self-penetration, Self-motion, Self-contraction and Dilatation, and Indivisibility; and there are those that I reckon more absolute; I will adde also what has relation to another, and that is the power of