Of all this these gentlemen have not the least
share, nor do they so much as pretend or desire to have
any. But while they are sinking and depressing their
contemplative part into the body, and dragging it down
by their sensual and intemperate appetites, as by so many
weights of lead, they make themselves appear little better
than hostlers or graziers that still ply their cattle with
hay, straw, or grass, looking upon such provender as the
properest and meetest food for them. And is it not even
thus they would swill the mind with the pleasures of the
body, as hogherds do their swine, while they will not
allow it can be gay any longer than it is hoping, feeling,
or remembering something that refers to the body; but
will not have it either to receive or seek for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what
can be more absurd and unreasonable than—when there
are two things that go to make up the man, a body and
a soul, and the soul besides hath the prerogative of governing—that the body should have its peculiar, natural,
and proper good, and the soul none at all, but must sit
gazing at the body and simper at its passions, as if she
were pleased and affected with them, though indeed she
be all the while wholly untouched and unconcerned, as
having nothing of her own to choose, desire, or take delight in? For they should either pull off the vizor quite,
and say plainly that man is all body (as some of them do,
that take away all mental being), or, if they will allow us
to have two distinct natures, they should then leave to
each its proper good and evil, agreeable and disagreeable;
as we find it to be with our senses, each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they all very
strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is the proper sense of the mind; and therefore
[p. 180]
that it should have no congenial speculation, movement,
or affection of its own, the attaining to which should be
matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational thing
in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the
men wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that
may perhaps have calumniated them.
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