There are others, who, though they have not denied one, have yet made systems that would do without one; seeming to think, concerning the trouble of governing a world, as queen Dido did of old, Scilicet is superis labor est; ea cura quietos Virg. Æn. iv. A third sort, with more decency, have neither denied a Providence, nor omitted one; yet have seldom recurred to it, but upon pressing occasions, when difficulties arose, which they either happened to find, or had happened to make. They appear to have conducted themselves by Horace's advice: Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus. Hor. Art. Poet. A fourth philosopher remains, and a respectable one he is, who supposes Providential wisdom never to cease for a single moment; and who says to it with reverence, what Ulysses did to Minerva, οὐδέ δε λήθω Κινύμενος. Nor can I move, and 'scape But to quit philosophers and poets, and return from a digression, to which we have been led insensibly by the latent connection of many different ideas. There remains nothing further, in the treating of substance, h It was the advice of the Epicureans, with regard to "themselves, not to marry, not to have children, not to engage in public affairs:” οὐ γὰρ γαμητέον, ἀλλ ̓ οὐδὲ παιδοποιητέον, ἀλλ ̓ οὐδὲ πολιτευτέον. Αrrian. Epict. iii. 7. p. 384. edit. Upt. The political life, according to them, was, like that of Sisiphus, a life of labour which knew no end. Hoc est adverso nixantem tundere monte rursum Volvitur, et plani raptim petit æquora campi. Hence, with regard to their gods, they provided them a similar felicity; a felicity, like their own, detached from all attention. Thus Horace, when an Epicurean : Deos didici securum agere ærum, Nec, si quid miri faciat natura, deos id Tristes ex alto cœli demittere tecto. Hor. lib. i. sat. 5. Thus Epicurus himself: τὸ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον οὔτε αὐτὸ πράγματα ἔχει, οὔτε λλ apexe: “that which is blessed and immortal (meaning the Divine Nature) has neither itself any business, nor does it find business for any other." Diog. Laert. x. 139. Ausonius has translated the sentiment in See also Lucretius i. 57. vi. 83, whom Horace seems to have copied in the verses above quoted. It is true, this idea destroyed that of a Providence; but to them, who derived the world from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, such a consequence was of small import ance. i Hom. Iliad. x. ver. 279. See Arrian's Epictetus, lib. i. c. 12, both in the original, and in Mrs. Carter's excellent translation. See also the comment of my worthy and learned friend Upton, on this chapter, in his valuable edition of that author, vol. ii. p. 40, 41. See also Psalm cxxxix. To the citations in note t, p. 293, may be added the following fine sentiment of Thales: Ἠρώτησέ τις αὐτὸν, εἰ λήθοι Θεοὺς ἄνθρωπος ἀδικῶν· ἀλλ ̓ οὐδὲ διανοούμενος, ἔφη: “ One asked him, If a man might escape the knowledge of the gods, when he was committing injustice? No, says he, not even when he is meditating it." Diog. Laert. i. 36. than to say something of those characters which are usually ascribed to it by Aristotle and his followers, when they consider it not in a physical, but in a logical view. CHAPTER VII. CONCERNING THE PROPERTIES OF SUBSTANCE, ATTRIBUTED TO IT IN THE PERIPATETIC LOGIC. THE ancient logicians, or rather Aristotle and his school, have given us of substance the following characters. They inform us, that, as substance, it is not susceptible of more and less. Thus a lion is not more or less a lion, by being more or less bulky; a triangle is not more or less a triangle, by being more or less acute-angled. The intensions and remissions are to be found in their accidents; the essences remain simply and immutably the same, and either absolutely are, or absolutely are not. m Again; substance, they tell us, admits of no contraries. It is to this that Milton alludes, when, after having personified substance, he tells us, To find a foe it shall not be his hap, And peace shall lull him in her flow'ry lap. Milt. Poems, No. ii. The assertion is evident in compound beings, that is to say, in substances natural; for what is there contrary to man considered as man, or to lion considered as lion? This is true also in the relation borne by matter to form; for while contraries by their coincidence destroy each other, these two, matter and form, coalesce so kindly, that no change to either arises from their union. Thus the marble, when adorned with the form of a statue, is as precisely marble as it was before; and the oak, when fashioned into the form of a ship, is as truly oak as when it flourished in the forest. If there be any contrariety in substance, it is that of form to privation, where privation nevertheless is nearly allied to nonentity. Lastly; substance, they tell us, is something, which, though it have no contrary, yet is by nature susceptible of all contraries, itself still remaining one and the same." We cannot forget that description, given by Virgil, of the Cumaan prophetess: Subito non vultus, non color unus, 1 Δοκεῖ δὲ ἡ ουσία μὴ ἐπιδέχεσθαι τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ ἧττον. Arist. Praed. p. 28. edit. Sylb. See Hermes, p. 175. · Ὑπάρχει δὲ ταῖς οὐσίαις καὶ τὸ μηδὲν avraîs évavríov elval. Arist. Præd. p. 28. edit. Sylb. Æn. vi. - Μάλιστα δὲ ἴδιον τῆς οὐσίας δοκεῖ εἶναι τὸ ταυτὸν καὶ ἐν ἀριθμῷ ἐν τῶν ἐναντίων εἶναι δεκτικόν. Arist. Præd. p. 29. edit. Sylb. Here we see her countenance and complexion perpetually changing, her hair dishevelled, her breast panting, and a transition too in her manners from sobriety to distraction. How different is all this from the appearance of that sibyl, who first so courteously received Æneas at Cumæ, and afterwards so prudently attended him to the shades? Yet, amidst all these contrarieties, was she still the same sibyl; she was susceptible of them all, without becoming another woman. This last character of substance appears to be the most essential for what is the support of contraries, or indeed of every attribute, but substance? Motion and rest, heat and cold, health and sickness, vigour and decay, are all to be found at times in each individual of the human race. Most of the same contraries are to be found among brutes, and some of them descend even to the race of vegetables. If we descend from these minuter substances to our terraqueous globe, here tempest and calm, frost and thaw, rain and drought, light and darkness, have each their turn; yet leave it, when they depart, after all their seeming contest, the same individual globe, and not another. Thus the poet, we have already quoted, still considering substance as a person : Yet he shall live in strife, and at his door To harbour those that are at enmity. Milt. Poems, No. ii. If we extend our views beyond the spot which we inhabit, what is the whole visible universe but the comprehensive receptacle of every contrary conceivable? Within this immense whole they all distributively exist, while each of them by succession fulfils its allotted period, without disturbing the general order, or impairing the general beauty. But if we ascend from passive and material substances up to such as are active and immaterial, here we shall find no distribution, no succession of contraries; but motion and rest, equality and inequality, similarity and dissimilarity, identity and diversity, will appear, each pair co-existing with the same being in the same instant, and that by an amazing connexion of both together under one. It is by virtue only of this combining, this unifying comprehension, (and which for that reason can only belong to a being unextended and indivisible,) that the mind or intellect pronounces that A is not B, that C is unequal to D, that E is unlike to F. Were such propositions, instead of being comprehended at once by something indivisible and one, to be comprehended in portions by the different parts of something divisible; or were they to be comprehended by a power indivisible, yet not at once, but in a succession; it would be as impossible either way to comprehend the real propositions, as it would if they were to U be recognised in part by a man in England, in part by one in China; or else in part by a man in the present century, in part by one of the succeeding. It may be asked, in such instances, who is it that comprehends the whole?° Lastly, much more in the Supreme Mind may we find such coincidence, since here, not only contraries, but all things whatever co-exist, and that, too, after a manner peculiarly transcendent; not by a knowledge which is partial, but by one which is universal; not with occasional remissions, but in one uniform unremitting energy; not by subsequent impressions from things already pre-existing, but by that original causality, through which it makes all things to exist. A noble field for speculating opens upon this occasion; which, though arising out of our subject, yet naturally leading us beyond it, we shall omit, and return to our logical inquiries, concluding here what we have to advance in our theory concerning substance. We are now to consider the remaining genera, predicaments, or arrangements; that is to say, quality, quantity, relation, site, &c. Some of these are at all times no higher than accidents; such, for example, as site or position, the time when, and the place where. Others, upon occasion, characterize and essentiate; such, for example, as magnitude, figure, colour, and many qualities. Thus a triply extended magnitude is essential to body, angularity to a cube, heat to fire, and colour to every superficies not transparent. In all such instances they make a part of the characteristic form, and in that sense are to be considered rather as substances than as accidents. However, as this holds not always, and that they are sometimes as merely and as strictly accidents • This reasoning, and that in Hermes, p. 221, note d, abundantly shew the supremacy of the mind among the faculties of the human soul. It is mind that sees the difference, not only between black and white, bitter and sweet, but (which no sense is equal to) the difference between black and bitter, white and sweet, and the various tribes of heterogeneous attributes. Nor does it shew this supremacy in these recognitions only, but likewise when under one and the same view it recognises objects of sense and of intellect united, as in case of syllogisms made of propositions particular and universal; such as (if I may be permitted to speak after so scholastic a manner) the syllogisms Darii and Ferio in the first figure. To this may be added, that this joint recognition of things multiform, contrary, and heterogeneous, and that by the same faculty, and in the same undivided instant, seems to prove in the strongest manner that such faculty (by this faculty I mean the mind or intellect) must be incorporeal; for body, being infinitely divisible, is by no means susceptible of such a simple and perfect unity, as this recognition must necessarily be. See Hermes, l. iii. c. 4. note d. See also Aristot. de Anima, l. iii. c. 2. p. 52. edit. Sylb. Themist. Paraph. p. 85. a, b. P See the chapter on Quality, where the verses of Empedocles are quoted. 4 The author, in the representing of ancient opinions, has endeavoured, as far as he was able, to make all his treatises consistent and explanatory one of another. Those who would see what he has already written on the two great elements of substance, discussed in this and the three preceding chapters, may search the index of Hermes for the words Matter and Form; and the index of Dialogue Concerning Art for the word Cause. as any of those which are so always, we choose under that common denomination to speculate upon them all, beginning, according to order, first from the first. CHAPTER VIII. CONCERNING QUALITIES- CORPOREAL AND INCORPOREAL-NATURAL AND ACQUIRED OF CAPACITY AND COMPLETION-TRANSITIONS IMMEDIATE, AND THROUGH A MEDIUM-DISPOSITIONS, HABITS-GENIUS -PRIMARY AND IMPERFECT CAPACITY-SECONDARY AND PERFECTWHERE IT IS THAT NO CAPACITIES EXIST-QUALITIES, PENETRATING AND SUPERFICIAL-ESSENTIAL FORM-FIGURE AN IMPORTANT QUALITY FIGURES INTELLECTUAL, NATURAL, ARTIFICIAL, FANTASTIC— COLOUR, ROUGHNESS, SMOOTHNESS, ETC. PERSONS OF QUALITY PROPERTIES OF QUALITY-SOME REJECTED, ONE ADMITTED, AND WHY. As substance justly holds the first rank among these predicaments, or universal arrangements, by being the single one among them that exists of itself, so the next in order, as some have asserted, is quality, because quality is said to be an attribute from which no substance is exempt. There may be substances, they tell us, devoid of quantity; such, for example, if we admit them, as the intellective, or immaterial; but that there should be substances devoid of quality is a thing hardly credible, because they could not then be characterized and distinguished one from another. On this reasoning it is maintained, that although we have no idea of quantity suggested to us in that animating principle, the soul, yet can we discern that this principle has many different qualities, and that animals from these qualities derive their distinct and specific characters. There is, for example, a social sympathy in the soul of man, which prompts the individuals of our species to congregate, and form themselves into tribes. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Terent. Heauton. act. i. We can trace the same congregating quality in the bee, in the beaver, and even in the ferocious wolf. It is, however, less fre This was the opinion of Archytas: πρῶτα μὲν τέτακται οὐσία—δευτέρα δὲ ἁ Tolóras: "the first in order is substance, the second quality." Simplic. in Præd. Quantitat. p. 31. edit. Basil. Simplicius adds, ὥσπερ ἡ οὐσία τοῦ ποσοῦ προυπάρχει, διότι τὸ εἶναι τῷ ποσῷ ἀπὸ τῆς οὐσίας ἐνδίδοται. οὕτως καὶ μετὰ τὸ ποιὸν ἂν εἴη τὸ ποσὸν, ἐπειδὴ τὸν χαρακτῆρα αὐτὸν, καὶ τὴν ἰδιότητα ἀπὸ τῆς ποιότητος ἔχει : as substance precedes quantity, because being 66 is imparted to quantity from substance, so also must quantity succeed and come after quality, inasmuch as it derives from quality its very character and distinctive peculiarity." Ibid. Τὸ ποιὸν λέγεται ἡ διαφορὰ τῆς οὐσίας: “The difference which attends each substance is called quality.” Arist. Me taph. Δ. c. 14. He explains it immediately: “ man is a biped animal; horse, quadruped." |