CHAP. III.] VOIUNTARY MOTION AND SENSIBILITY. 17? 



because they oppose and contradict that Divine sentence 

 passed upon man for sin : " In the sweat of thy brow thou 

 Bhalt eat thy bread." For this kind of magic offers those ex- 

 cellent fruits which God had ordained should be procured by 

 labour at the price of a few easy and slight observances. 



There are two other doctrines which iDrincipally regard 

 the faculties of the inferior or sensitive soul, as chiefly com- 

 municating with the organs of the body, — the one is of 

 voluntary motion, the other of sense and sensibility. The 

 former has been but superficially inquired into, and one 

 entire part of it is almost wholly neglected. The ofiice and 

 proper structure of the nerves, muscles, &c., requisite to 

 muscular motion, what parts of the body rest while others 

 move, and how the imagination acts as director of this 

 motion, so far that when it drops the image whereto the 

 motion tended, the motion itself presently ceases, — as in 

 walking, if another serious thought come across our mind, 

 we presently stand still; with many other such subtilties, 

 have long ago been observed and scrutinized. But how the 

 compressions, dilatations, and agitations of the spirit, which, 

 doubtless, is the spring of motion, should guide and rule the 

 corporeal and gross mass of the parts, has not yet been dili- 

 gently searched into and treated. And no wonder, since the 

 sensitive soul itself has been hitherto taken for a principle 

 of motion and a function, rather than a substance.s But as 



» The original is, p7'0 entelechia et functione quadam, alluding to the 

 technical term entelechy, which Aristotle introduced into his Physics 

 (iii. 1) to denote the act through which any substance exercises its 

 power. The rational soul was never taken in the sense of a simple act, 

 or entelechy, as Bacon would insinuate, but was affirmed even by Aris- 

 totle, who introduced the phrase, to be a certain power apart and dis- 

 tinguished from the rest of the human system, as the eternal is distin- 

 guishable from the incorruptible. His words are : Trepl de tou vou kqi 

 rqg OnofjrjTiKfiQ Cvvafitojg ovdsirto (pavtpov. 'AXV toiKi "^vxrjg yivog 

 ETfpov iivai, <ai rovro fiovov Ivdkx^Tai ^wpiZfcr^ai KaOcnrep diSiov tou 

 <pQapTov (Arist. De An. ii. 2) ; and as this power is not a simple act, but 

 the effect of a vital substance, possessing the principle ot activity vir- 

 tually in itself, he implies its capability to communicate motion to sur- 

 rounding bodies even in a state of immobility; Icidq ydo ov fxovov 

 rpticoQ i<TTi TO Trjv ovffiav avTrJQ Toi avrijv tlvai olav <paaiv oWiyovTtQ 

 ilvai Tr)v y\/vxnv to kivovv uvto ^ Cvvctfifvov Kivflv dXX' eV ti tCju 

 acvvdrtav to virdpxfiv airy Kivrjmv. (Arist. ibid. iii. 1.) With regard 

 to the precise meaning ot the word entelechy there have been many 

 disputes among the learned. The origin of the tenn ought to be allowed 



