SUBSEC. 9. Of the Rational Soul.

In the precedent Subsections I have anatomized those inferior faculties of the soul; the Rational remaineth, a pleasant, but a doubtful subject (as one termes it) and with the like brevity to be discussed. Many erronious opinions are about the essence and original of it; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or bloud; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body.

Some holde that it is ex traduce, as Phil. 1. de Animâ, Tertullian, Lactantius de opific. Dei cap. 19. Hugo lib. de Spiritu & Animâ, Vincentius Bellavic. spec. natural. lib. 23. cap. 2. & 11. Hippocrates, Avicenna, and many late writers; that one man begets another, body and soul: or as a candle from a candle, to be produced from the seed:

otherwise, say they, a man begets but half a man, and is worse then a beast that begets both matter and forme; and besides the three faculties of the soule must be together infused, which is most absurd as they hold, because in beasts they are begot, the two inferior I meane, and may not be well separated in men. Galen suposeth the soul crasin esse, to be the Temperature it self;

Trismegistus, Musæus, Orpheus, Homer, Pindarus, Phærecides Syrus, Epictetus, with the Chaldees and Ægyptians, affirmed the soul to be immortal, as did those Britan Druides of old. The Pythagorians defend Metempsychosis, and Palingenesia, that soules go from one body to another, epotâ prius Lethes undâ, as men into Wolves, Beares, Dogs, Hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions.

— inque ferinas Possumus ire domus, pecudumque in corpora condi.

Lucians Cock was first Euphorbus a Captaine:

Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli, Panthoides Euphorbus eram,

a horse, a man, a spunge. Julian the Apostata thought Alexanders soul was descended into his body: Plato in Timæo, and in his Phædon (for ought I can perceive) differs not much from this opinion, that it was from God at first, and knew all, but being inclosed in the body, it forgets, and learnes anew, which he calls reminiscentia, or recalling, and that it was put into the body for a punishment,

and thence it goes into a beasts or mans, as appeares by his pleasant fiction de sortitione animarum, lib. 10. de rep. and after 10000. yeares is to returne into the former body again,

— post varios annos, per mille figuras, Rursus ad humanæ fertur primordia vitæ.

Others deny the immortality of it, which Pomponatus of Padua decided out of Aristotle not long since, Plinius Avunculus cap. 7. lib. 2. & lib. 7. cap. 55. Seneca lib. 7. epist. ad Lucilium epist. 55. Dicæarchus in Tull. Tusc. Epicurus, Aratus, Hippocrates, Galen, Lucretius lib. 1.

(Prætereà gigni pariter cum corpore, & unà Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem)

Averroes, and I know not how many Neotericks. This question of the immortality of the Soul, is diversly and wonderfully impugned and disputed, especially amongst the Italians of late, saith Iab. Colerus lib. de immort. animæ, cap. 1. The Popes themselves have doubted of it, Leo Decimus that Epicurean Pope, as some record of him, caused this question to be discussed pro and con before him, and concluded at last, as a prophane and atheisticall Moderator, with that verse of Cornelius Gallus,

Et redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil.

It began of nothing, and in nothing it ends. Zeno and his Stoicks as Austin quotes him, supposed the Soul so long to continue, till the Body was fully putrified, and resolved into materia prima: but after that, in fumos evanescere; to be extinguished and vanish; and in the meane time, whilst the body was consuming, it wandred all abroad, & è longinquo multa annunciare, and (as that Clazomenian Hermotimus averred) saw pretty visions, and suffered I know not what.

Errant exangues sine corpore & ossibus umbræ.

Others grant the immortality thereof, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the body: like Plato’s Elisian fields, and that Turkie Paradise. The soules of good men they deified; the bad (saith Austin) became devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenents, which he hath confuted.

Hierome, Austin, and other Fathers of the church, hold that the Soul is immortal, created of nothing, and so infused into the childe or Embrio in his mothers wombe six moneths after the Conception; not as those of brutes, which are ex traduce, and dying with them vanish into nothing. To whose divine treaties, and to the Scriptures themselves, I rejourne all such Atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato’s Phædon.

Or if they desire Philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic. Faventinus tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus in digress: sup. 3. de Animâ, Tholosanus, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolets 60. reasons, and Lessius 22. arguments, to prove the immortality of the soul.

Campanella lib. de sensu rerum, is large in the same discourse, Albertinus the Schoolman, Iacob. Naclantus, Tom. 2. op. handleth it in four questions, Antony Brunus, Aonius Palearius, Marinus Marcennus, with many others.

This Reasonable Soul, which Austin calls a spiritual substance moving it self, is defined by Philosophers to be the first substantial act of a Natural, Humane, Organical Body, by which a man lives, perceives, and understands, freely doing all things, and with election. Out of which definition we may gather, that this Rational Soul includes the powers, and performes the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one Soul, which is inorganical of it self, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their Organs, and working by them.

It is divided into two chief parts, differing in office only, not in essence. The understanding, which is the Rational power apprehending; the will, which is the Rational power moving: to which two, all the other Rational powers are subject and reduced.