174 ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [BOOK IV. 



ignorance of it has produced 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 j'^ viz., the under- 

 standing, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, will, and 

 all those wherewith logic and ethics are concerned. In the 

 doctrine of the soul the origin of these laculties 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 appendages, 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 ot the mind, without the 



relating to this subject, entitled, " De Animil Corpori coextens^ ; " 

 printed at Paris, 1605. See also " Hobokenius de Sede Animae in 

 Corpora Humano." Ed. 



•* The text is indistinct. We are not told whether tlie faculties here 

 enumerated belong to the produced or to the rational soul. Though 

 from the language of the text, and the order of inquiry, the for- 

 mer appears to be the most probable 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 prin- 

 ciple to which it is ahnost invariably opposed. To obviate such diffi- 

 culties, Aristotle and Plato made a similar distinction between the 

 rational and the sensitive principle in man, and assigned reason, 

 imagination, and memory to the one, while they restricted appetite and 

 tjensational 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 ot the human 

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

 fclow Id putting this interpretation upon his doctrine. Ed, 



