SECT. IV.
The true Method that ought to be taken for the proving that Matter cannot think.
LAstly, if Cartesius with his Nullibists would have dealt bona fide, they ought to have omitted all those ambagious Windings and Meanders of feigned Abstraction, and with a direct stroke to have fallen upon the thing it self, and so to have sifted Matter, and searched the Nature of Cogitation, that they might thence have evidently demonstrated that there was some inseparable Attribute in Matter, that is repugnant to the Cogitative Faculty, or in Cogitation that is repugnant to Matter. But out of the mere diversity of Ideas or Notions of any Attributes, to collect their separability or real distinction, yea, their contrariety and repugnancy, is most foully to violate the indispensable Laws of Logick, and to confound Diversa with Opposita, and make them all one. Which Mistake to them that understand Logick, must needs appear very coarse and absurd.
But that the weakness and vacillancy of this Method may yet more clearly appear, let us suppose that which yet Philosophers of no mean Name, seriously stand for and assert, viz. That Cogitative substance is either Material or Immaterial; does it not apparently follow thence, that a thinking Substance may be precisely conceived without the conception of Matter, as Matter without the conception of Cogitation, when notwithstanding in one of the Members of this distribution they are joyned sufficiently close together?
How can therefore this newfangled Method of Cartesius convince us that this Supposition is false, and that the distribution is illegitimate? Can it from thence, that Matter may be conceived without Cogitation, and Cogitation without Matter? The first all grant, and the other the distribution it self supposes; and yet continues sufficiently firm and sure, therefore it is very evident, that there is a necessity of our having recourse to the known and ratified Laws of Logick, which many Ages before this new upstart Method of des Cartes appeared, were established and approved by the common suffrage of Mankind; Which teach us that in every le-gitimate
