NEW ESSAYS 383 



have held that we cannot believe in the preservation 

 of the souls of the lower animals without falling into 

 metempsychosis and making them go [promener] from 

 body to body, and the perplexity in which people have 

 been through not knowing what to do with them 116 , 

 have, in my opinion, led to the neglect of the natural 

 way of explaining the preservation of the soul. This 

 has done great injury to natural religion and has led 

 a good many to believe that our immortality is only 

 a miraculous grace of God ; and our celebrated author 

 also speaks of it with some doubt, as I shall mention 

 presently 117 . But it were well if all those who are of 

 this opinion had spoken about it as wisely and as 

 sincerely as he ; for it is to be feared that a good many 

 people who speak of immortality through grace, do so 

 only to save appearances, and are at bottom nearly of 

 the same opinion as those Averroists 118 and some erring 



vi. 530) : ' It is true, the Peripatetic philosophers did not regard this 

 spirit as absolutely universal ; for besides the intelligences which, 

 according to them, animate the stars, they had an intelligence for 

 this lower world, and this intelligence performed the function 

 of active understanding in the souls of men.' See also Bayle's 

 Dictionary, vol. iv, article Ricius, note C. 



116 E. omits from ' and making ' to < with them.' 



117 Infra, pp. 389 sqq. See Locke, Essay, bk. iv. ch. 3, 6 (Fraser's 

 ed., vol. ii. p. 195, with note), and bk. iv. ch. 4, 15 (Fraser, vol. ii. 

 p. 240 note). Cf. also Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity (opening 

 paragraphs), where Locke seems to make the immortality of the 

 soul conditional on religious faith. 



118 Averroes (or Ibn Roschd) was born at Cordova in 1126 and 

 died in 1198. Much of his philosophizing was concerned with the 

 relation between the vovs TTOIIJTIKOS (a phrase never actually used by 

 Aristotle) and the vovs iraOrjTifcos of Aristotle. (See De Anima, iii. 

 5, 430* 10 sqq.) Developing a suggestion of Aristotle, Averroes 

 regards the vovs TTOIIJTIKOS as one principle appearing in all men, 

 while the vovs iraOijTiKos is peculiar to the individual. The vovs 

 iroirjTiKos is ultimately identical with the Divine Spirit and is thus 

 immortal ; but there is no individual immortality, for the vovs 

 iraOrjTiKos is mortal. Cf. Leibniz's Considerations sur la Doctrine d'un 

 Esprit Universel Unique (1702) (E. 178 a ; Gr. vi. 529) : i Several people of 

 intellect have thought and do still think that there is only one spirit, 



