202 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



superstitious and very corrupt opinions, that greatly lessen 

 the dignity of the human soul such as the transmigration 

 and lustration of souls through certain periods of years, and 

 the too near relation in all respects of the human soul to the 

 soul of brutes. For this soul in brutes is a principal soul, 

 whereof their body is the organ; but in man it is itself an 

 organ of the rational soul, and may rather be called by the 

 name spirit than soul. 



The faculties of the soul are well known; 4 via., the un 

 derstanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, will, and 

 all those wherewith logic and ethics are concerned. In the 

 doctrine of the soul the origin of these faculties must be 

 physically treated, as they may be innate and adhering to 

 the soul, but their uses and objects are referred to other 

 arts; and in this part nothing extraordinary has hitherto 

 appeared, though we do not indeed report it as wanting. 

 This part of the faculties of the soul has also two appen 

 dages, which as they have yet been handled, rather present 

 us with smoke than any clear flame of truth one being the 

 doctrine of natural divination, the other of fascination. 



Divination has been anciently and properly divided into 

 artificial and natural. The artificial draws its predictions 

 by reasoning from the indication of signs; but the natural 

 predicts from the internal foresight of the mind, without the 

 assistance of signs. Artificial divination is of two kinds 

 one arguing from causes, the other only from experiments 



4 The text is indistinct. We are not told whether the faculties here enumer 

 ated belong to the produced or to the rational soul. Though from the language 

 of the text, and the order of inquiry, the former appears to be the most prob 

 able opinion : yet we do not see how the origin of conscience to which they 

 refer can be physically treated, or how the same substance can unite appetite, 

 and the principle to which it is almost invariably opposed. To obviate such 

 difficulties, Aristotle and Plato made a similar distinction between the rational 

 and the sensitive principle in man, and assigned reason, imagination and mem 

 ory to the one, while they restricted appetite and sensational feeling to the 

 other. Bacon, however, seems to place all these faculties in the sensitive soul, 

 and leaves the inspired substance a mere breath or aura, without either faculties 

 or functions. By thus implying the cogitative power of matter, he has in some 

 measure countenanced the dangerous belief of the corruptibility of the human 

 soul and its expiration with the body; at least, sceptics have not been slow 

 in putting this interpretation upon his doctrine. Ed. 



