different Kind; and that they are so, is more than probable, fince it is plain they can have no fuch Confciousness of their own Senfations as we have of ours; nor have they any Knowledge of them properly fo call'd, as we have; nor have their Senfations any immediate effential Concurrence of Spirit as those which are human: So that fince this feems to be the Cafe, all the Impreffions made upon the Organs of Senfation in Brutes, and the Ideas confequent to thofe Impreffions are realy to be confidered as abftractedly and as much feparated from any Concurrence or Observation of a true Principle of Reason and Understanding, as the Sound and Motions of a Clock. And for this reafon I would have it remark'd here, that whenever I ufe the Words Knowledge, or Difcerning, or Distinguishing, or Action, as applied to Brutes; I don't mean that they have any fuch Powers properly fpeaking as those which are called by the fame Names in Mankind: But only that these are the best Analogous Notions and Words we have, to represent thofe Movements of theirs which feem to Mimick the Actions and Faculties of Men.

BUT however this may be, yet the Obfervation arifing from thence is very natural; that those Men run into an unreasonable Extreme on the other hand, who to avoid the Souls of Brutes being immaterial, will have them to be no other than a more refin'd and complicated

complicated fort of Engines or Inftruments; and call them mere Machines, or Puppets, or Clockwork; as if the Wisdom and Power of the great Creator in the Disposition of Matter and Motion, were to be directed by the Rules of our Mechanics; and confined to obferve the Measures of human Artifice and Contrivance. As if God could not, after an Inconceivable manner, work up a Syftem of mere Matter into a Brute? and by a curious Disposition and Contexture of all its Parts, vaftly out of the reach of our Comprehenfion, could not render it in a peculiar manner fufceptible of fuch Motions and Impreffions from external material Objects, as may be the impulsive Cause of all that variety of Actions we fee in them; and particularly of those which have so near and lively a Resemblance of our human Senfations. So that all the Arguments to prove Brutes mere Machines and Engines, in the common Acceptation of those Terms, are precarious and imaginary; and the Words carry with them an odious tho' tacit Comparison between the Art and Contrivance of Man, and the infinite Power and Wisdom of God, whenever they are used otherwife than as bare Illuftrations only of the Actions of Brutes; after which manner alone I would have them understood wherever they occur in this part of my Difcourfe.

THEY

T

THEY Who hold Senfitive Perception in Brutes to be an Argument of the Immateriality of their Souls, find themselves under a Neceffity of allowing thofe Souls to be Naturaly Immortal likewife; and they are fo embarrassed in thinking how to difpofe of those Irrational Immortal Souls after the Diffolution of their Bodies, and what fort of Immortality to contrive for them, that they imagine them all to return into the great Soul or Spirit of the World; or by a Metempfychofis to pafs into the Bodies of fucceeding Animals; and then when they have done their Work, at the End of the World they are to be discharged out of Being, and again reduced to their primitive Nothing.

BUT if thofe Souls are once granted to be Immaterial, it is utterly inconceivable that they fhould not Naturaly have the fame Immortality with those which are Human; fince we cannot with any Sence or Confiftency distinguish two Different Kinds of Immortality for created Spirits. If the Soul of Brutes is Immortal, That cannot, when feparated, be thought to remain altogether in a State of utter Inactivity and Infenfibility, which communicated Senfe and Activity to Matter while in Conjunction with it. And if fo, they must be sensible of Happiness or Mifery; and in fome Degree liable to Rewards and Punishments, as eternal as their Souls.

WHAT

WHAT heightens the Abfurdity of this Way of Thinking is, that in imagining the Souls of Brutes to be Immaterial, Men must neceffarily distinguish a great Variety of them both in Nature and degree; one fort for Birds, another for Beafts, and another for Fishes. And. these must be all fubdivided again into very different Species of immaterial Souls, according to the different Sorts there are under each of thofe general Heads. Nay every Fly and Infect must on this Suppofition have fome fort of immaterial Soul, even down to the Cheese Mite; and what is yet more abfurd is, that there must be an infinite Variety of Immortalities imagin'd to fuit the Rank and Condition, of every individual, living fenfible Creature.

IS HALL conclude this Head of the Simple Apprehenfion or intellectual View of the Mind which follows upon Senfation, when I observe that the Reason why the Intellect, which takes a clear and diftinct View of fuch numberless Objects of Senfe in their Ideas; hath not however the least obscure or indiftinct direct Apprehenfion or fimple Intuition of a Pure Spirit; is, because we neither have an immediate Confcioufness, nor aDirect fenfible Perception of any thing relating to the Nature of fuch a Being nor can there be any Idea of it, to be view'd in the Imagination; which is however Capacious enough to take in all vifible Nature, and

to

to ftore up an immenfe Number of Ideas of all Objects which occur to the Senfes. What an amazing Variety of them are daily conveyed in by that one Sense of Seeing? to which if we add those of the other Senfes, we fhall render the Number inexhaustible; and yet nothing of all these is properly Knowledge, confider'd in themselves, and abstractedly from that Intuition or View taken of them by the pure Intellect: They are only the rude and unwrought Materials, heaped together for that Superftructure which every Man is to raife according to the peculiar Difpofition of his natural Genius, the different Methods he purfues, and the Degrees of that Application of the Intellect which

he uses.

СНАР. III.

The fecond Operation of the pure Intellect, That of Judgment.

TH

'HE fecond Operation of the pure Intellect upon the Ideas of Senfation is commonly called the Judgment it paffes upon them. Because my Purpofe is not to go thro' the Art of Logic in general, but to trace the Rife, and Progrefs, and Extent of our Knowledge, more efpecialy as it relates to Religion and the things of another World; I fhall not enlarge upon this Operation as far as the Nature

I