The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

it wants no testimony) often said by the ancients. Φασὶ γὰρ ἔνιοι, καὶ μάλιστα, καὶ πρώτως ψυχὴν εἶναι τὸ κινοῦν: “Some affirm that the soul is the chief and the First mover.” (Aristotle, De Anima.) Ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ ἔνδοθε, κινοῦν τὰ σώματα, καὶ ἀυτοκίνητον: “It is the soul that moves the body from within, and is a self-moving being.” (Simplicius.) Ἀρχὴ κινήσεως: “The principle of motion.” (Plotinus, Enneads.) ↩

Ἡ ψυχὴ περίεισι πᾶσαν γῆν, ἐη γῆς ἐπ᾿ οὕρανον, κ.τ.λ.: “The soul can take a view over the whole earth, and ascend from thence into heaven.” (Maximus Tyrius, Dissertations.) ↩

What a ridiculous argument for the materiality of the soul is that in Lucretius (De Rerum Natura)? Ubi propellere membra, Conripere ex somno corpus, etc. videtur (Quorum nil fieri sine tactu posse videmus, Nec tactum porro sine corpore); nonne fatendum est Corporeâ naturâ animum constare, animamque? “For do we not see that the mind moves the several members, wakes the body out of sleep, etc. (none of which can be done without touching it, and there can be no such thing as touching, without matter) must not we own then, that the soul and mind are material?” If nothing can move the body but another body, what moves this? The body might as well move itself, as be moved by one that does. ↩

Τάχιστον νοῦς· διὰ παντὸς γὰρ τρέχει: “The soul is very quick, for it runs everywhere.” (Thales, in Diogenes Laërtius’s Life of Thales.) ↩

Diogenes, though he could see the table and the pot, could not by his eyes see Plato’s τραπεβότης, και κυαθότης: “tableity or potteity;” that is, he could not see what it was that constituted them a table or a pot. (Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Diogenes.) ↩

Plato, and οἱ σοφοὶ, “the wise men,” (more generally) say that the soul indeed perceives objects of sense by the mediation of the body, but there are νοητὰ, “intellectual things,” which it does καθ᾿ ἁυτὴν ἐνθυμεῖσθαι, “meditate upon by itself.” (in Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Plato.) ↩

Such a soul must be indeed as Gregory Thaumaturgus has it, σῶμα ἔμψυχον. Ἄτοπον δὲ ψυχῆς ψυχὴν λέγειν: “an animated body. For it is absurd to speak of the soul of a soul.” ↩

This is worse than ψυχὴ ψυχῆς, “the soul of a soul,” in Maximus Tyrius and the place just before cited. The author of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding [John Locke] has himself exploded it, or what is very like it. “To ask,” says he, “whether the will has freedom, is to ask whether one power has another power, one ability another ability; a question at first sight too grossly absurd to make a dispute or need an answer. For who is it that sees not, that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of substances, and not of powers themselves?” There is, if my memory does not deceive me, another passage somewhere in the same book as much (or more) to my purpose, but at present I cannot find it. ↩

If the soul is only an accident (or attribute) of the body, how comes this accident to have (or be the support of) other accidents, contrary ones too? As when we say, נפש חכמה ונפש סכלה וכו׳: “a wise soul, or a foolish soul.” (Emunoth ve-Deoth.) ↩

Ἕτερον δη τότε χρώμενον καὶ ᾧ χρῆται: “For that which uses, and that which is used, are two different things.” (Plato, Alcibiades.) ↩

Or, “if to a thinking substance can be superadded the modification of solidity.” Which way of speaking, though I do not remember to have met with it anywhere, nor does it seem to differ much from the other, yet would please me better. ↩

“It is worth our consideration, whether active power be not the proper attribute of spirit, and passive power of matter. Hence may be conjectured that created spirits are not totally separate from matter, because they are both active and passive. Pure spirit, viz. God, is only active; pure matter is only passive; those Beings, that are both active and passive, we may judge to partake of both.” (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.) ↩

This is Socrates’s argument in Plato. The soul is altogether ἀδιάλυτος, “indissolvible,” and therefore ἀνώλεθρος, “cannot be destroyed.” (Phaedo.) Which Cicero interprets thus: nec discerpi, nec distrahi potest; nec interire igitur: “it can neither be divided nor separated into parts, and consequently cannot be destroyed.” (Tusculan Disputations.) ↩

Lucretius seems to be aware of this. Jam triplex animi est natura reperta: Nec tamen hæc sat sunt ad sensum cuncta creandum, etc. Quarta quoque his igitur quædam natura necesse est Atribuatur: ea est omnino nominis expers: “The soul is found to be made up of three parts, nor are all these sufficient to produce understanding, etc. It is necessary therefore that some other particular fourth nature should be added to these: and this we have no name at all for.” (De Rerum Natura.) ↩

If Lucan, by sensus, “sense,” means all manner of apprehension and knowledge, there is no room for that disjunction: Aut nihil est sensûs animis à morte relictum, Aut mors ipsa nihil: “Either there remains no sense at all in the soul after death, or death itself is nothing.” (Pharsalia.) For if the former part be true, the other will follow. ↩