Page:Saducismus Triumphatus.djvu/126

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The true Notion of a Spirit.

of its Essence with their properties; Which unless a man reach to, he cannot rightly judge of the real separability of any nature from other natures.

From whence it appears how soully Cartesius has imposed, if not upon himself, at least upon others, when from this mental precision of Cogitation from Extension, he defined a Spirit (such as the humane Soul) by Cogitation onely, Matter by Extension, and divided all Substance into Cogitant and Extended, as into their first species or kinds. Which distribution notwithstanding is as absonous and absurd, as if he had distributed Animal into Sensitive and Rational. Whenas all Substance is extended as well as all Animals sensitive. But he fixed his Animadversion upon the specifick nature of the humane Soul; the Generical nature thereof, either on purpose or by inadvertency, being not considered nor taken notice of by him, as hath been noted in Enchiridion Ethicum, lib. 3. cap. 4. sect. 3.


SECT. IX.

The third and last Reason of the Nullibists, viz. That the Mind is conscious to herself, that she is nowhere, unless she be disturbed or jogged by the Body.

THe third and last Reason, which is the most ingenious of them all, occurs in Lambertus Velthusius, viz. That it is a truth which God has infused into the Mind itself, That she is no where, because we know by experience that we cannot tell from our spiritual Operations where the Mind is. And for that we know her to be in our Body, that we only perceive from the Operations of Sense and Imagination, which without the Body or the motion of the Body the Mind cannot perform. The sence whereof, if I guess right, is this; That the Mind by a certain internal sense is conscious to her self that she is no where, unless she be now and then disturbed by the motions or joggings of the Body; which is, as I said, an ingenious presage, but not true: For it is one thing to perceive her self to be no where, another not to perceive her self to be some where. For