298 



sical organization, must, by a secondary effect, modify these last, that we 

 can possibly understand the diversity of humours, of opinions, of charac- 

 ters, and of genius. He who has well appreciated the effect, on the jWlg- 

 ment and reason, of the sensations that spring from the habitual state of 

 the internal organs, sees easily the origin of those everlasting disputes on 

 the distinction between the sensitive and the rational soul; why some 

 philosophers have believed man solicited for ever by a good or an evil ge- 

 nius ; spirits which they have personified under the names of Oromazes, 

 and Arim'anes, betwixt whom they imagined eternal war; the contest of 

 the soul with the senses, of the spirit with the flesh, of the concupiscent 

 and irascible with the intellectual principle, .that contradiction which St. 

 Paul laboured under, when he said in his Epistle to the Romans, that his 

 members were in open war with his reason. These phenomena which 

 suggest the conception of a two-fold being (Homo duplex, Buffon,) are 

 nothing but a necK^ary strife betwixt the determinations of instinct and 

 the determinations of^^on 5 between the often times imperious wants 

 of the organic nature, antN<he judgment which keeps them under, or de- 

 liberates on the means of SHisfying them, without offending received 

 ideas of fitness, of duty, of relr^on, & c . 



CLV. A being, absolutely desr*ut e O f sensitive organs, would possess 

 only the existence of vegetation: iiVesense were added, he would not 

 yet possess understanding, because, as^qndillac has shown, the impres- 

 sions produced on this only sense, wouldN^t admit of comparison ; it 

 would end in an inward feeling, a perception ^pxistence, and he would 

 believe the things which affected him to be a p^t of his being. The 

 fundamental truth, so completely made out by mode^ metaphysicians, is 

 found distinctly stated in the writings of Aristotle 5* a^d there is room 

 for surprise, that that father of philosophy should have merely recognised 

 it, without conforming to its doctrines ; but, still more that it should 

 ,have been for so many ages disregarded by his successors. So absolute- 

 ly is sensation the source of all our knowledge, that even the measure of 

 understanding is according to the number and perfection of the organs 

 of sense ; and that by successively depriving them of the intelligent be- 

 ing, we should lower, at each step, his intellectual nature 5 whilst the ad- 

 dition of a new sense to those we now possess, might lead us to a multi- 

 tude of unknown sensations and ideas> would disclose to us in the beings 

 we are concerned with, a vast variety of new relations, and would greatly 

 enlarge the sphere of our intelligence, 



The impression, produced on any organ, by the action of an outward 

 body, does not constitute sensation ; h is farther requisite, that the im- 

 pression be transmitted to the brain, that it be there perceived, that is, felt 

 by that organ ; the sensation then becomes fitvception, and this first modi- 

 fication supposes, as is apparent, a centrak orgwi, to which the impres- 

 sions on the organs may be carried. The cerebral fibres are, more or less 

 disturbed, by the sensations sent to them, at once> from all the organs of 

 sense 5 and we should acquire but confused notions of the bodies from 

 which they proceed, if one stronger perception did not silence, as it were, 

 the rest, and fix the attention. In this concentration of the soul upon a 

 single object, the brain is feebly stirred by many sensations that leave no 



* JVil est in intelleclu, quod non prius fuerit in scnsu .-Nisi intellectus ipse t as Leibnitz 

 has Very justly added. See APPENDIX, Note E E. 



