i , INTRODUCTION. 



muft be confined to thofe that are moft general. Thefe are of 

 different kinds : And therefore a general divifion of them was necef- 

 fiary ; which Ariitotle has given us into four kinds, the efficient, the 

 materialy the forma?, and tire final. And, if Atiftotle had done no 

 more in philofophy than making this diftin<3;ion of caufes, I fhould 

 have thought he had done a great deal : For, philofophy being the 

 knowledge of caufes, he may be faid, by his dodtrine of caufes, to 

 havCilaid the ver-y foundation of philofophy, as I have elfewhere ob- 

 ferved *. Before Aritlotle,'no philofopher of Greece appears to have 

 made this diftindion accurately, but to have confounded all the four 

 caufes, and particularly the efficient and the material, which made 

 the firft philofophy ia Greece, before the philofophy ot Pythagoras 

 was introduced by Plato and Ariftotle, no better than downright ma- 

 terialifm f- And fome of the modern philofophers, by endeavour- 

 ing to account for the motions of body from a vis inftta in the body, 

 or from ethers, fluids, and fubtile fpirits, have advanced dodrines 

 v/hich have a tendency to materialifm : -For, if bcrdies can in any 

 \yay move themfelves, there is an end of the fyftcm of the:fm J. 



The firft of the caafes I havs named is the Efficient, by whofe ope-*- 

 rations every thing in the material world is produced. This caufe is^ 

 what I call 7mnd; and I divide it int6 fouf kinds ; for it is either the in- 

 telledtual, the animal, the vegetable mind, or that mind which I call' 

 the elemental, and which is the principle of motion in all the bodies 

 on this earth, not only the organized, fuch as the animal and vege- 

 table, but the unorganized, fuch as the minerals. Thefe feveral 

 minds I have been at great pains to diRinguifli from one another in 



different 



* See Vol. II. of this Work, Book iv. Chap. 4. in the beginning 



-f Pref.ice to Vol. III. p. 12. 



J^ Vol. II. Book iv. Chap. 3. in the beginning. 



