Hugo Grotius · 28 of 132

SECT. XXIII. And no way repugnant to reason.

NEITHER can we find any argument drawn from nature, which overthrows this ancient and extensive tradition: for all those things, which seem to us to be destroyed, are either destroyed by the opposition of something more powerful than themselves, as cold is destroyed by the greater force of heat; or by taking away the subject upon which they depend, as the magnitude of a glass, by breaking it; or by the defect of the efficient cause, as light by the absence of the sun. But none of these can be applied to the mind. Not the first, because nothing can be conceived contrary to the mind; nay, such is the peculiar nature of it, that it is capable equally, and at the same time, of contrary things in its own, that is, in an intellectual, manner. Not the second, because there is no subject upon which the nature of the soul depends; for if there were any, it would be a human body; and that it is not so, appears from hence, that when the strength of the body fails by action, the mind only does not contract any weariness by acting. Also, the powers of the body suffer, by the too great power of the things which are the objects of them, as sight by the light of the sun. But the mind is rendered the more perfect, by bow much the more excellent the things are about which it is conversant; as about figures abstracted from matter, and about universal propositions. The powers of the body are exercised about those things which are limited by time and place, but the mind, about that which is infinite and eternal. Therefore, since the mind, in its operations, does not depend upon the body, so neither does its existence depend upon it; for we cannot judge of the nature of those things which we do not see, but from their operations. Neither has the third method of being destroyed any place here: for there is no efficient cause from which the mind continually flows: not the parents, because the children live after they are dead. If we allow any cause at all, from whence the mind flows, it can be no other than the first and universal cause, which, as to its power, can never fail; and as to its will, that that should fail, that is, that God should will the soul to be destroyed, this can never be proved by any arguments.