senses, and their appetites after the gratifications suited to them, a most noble exercise for our reason and moral discernment? By this means, our guiding part hath something to guide and govern: subjects committed to its trust, keeping and management; subjects to provide for, and to rule and maintain in decent and good order and<68> discipline. We have therefore, in consequence of our having bodies, amoral dominion committed to us, in which to acquit ourselves honourably, that is, wisely and prudently, or according to truth, reason, and the fitness of things, is certainly the noblest employment we can form any notion of. The spheres or employments of other beings cannot be higher in kind; the difference can only be in species, or rather in degree. For what can be conceived more great or excellent, than to have business of importance to our own happiness, and that of our kind, to manage by reason; subjects to rule and conduct for the good of the whole? And such are we ourselves to ourselves by our make; that is, such are the inferior parts of our constitution, or our bodily appetites, to that which is principal in us, our reason and moral conscience.a
Thus therefore, in consequence of our having bodies, we are not only capable of contemplating and imitating the sensible world, and of various other pleasures; but our reason hath very proper practical employment. For thus is it that we are capable of all the virtues which are justly divided by ancient moralists into Sustenenceb and Abstinence; or the power of being able to with-hold from the most inviting pleasures, if they be either pernicious in their consequences, or unbecoming our dignity: and the power of suffering any pain with magnanimity, rather than forego our reason, and contradict<69> our moral conscience, by yielding to what these pronounce base and unworthy.
All this, it is plain, supposes a moral sense in our constitution, of which something hath been already said, and that shall afterwards be considered more fully. Mean time, if it be true, that our relation to the sensible world is conducive, or rather necessary to the excellent purposes above-mentioned, it plainly follows, that a reciprocal union between our body and mind, must be morally fit and good.
But this will be yet more evident, if we consider a little some other effects, resulting from this reciprocal connexion, or from our dependence upon the laws of the sensible world, from which we receive so many pleasures, not merely of the sensitive kind.
The general law with respect to sensible pains.
Sensible pains whence they arise.
I. It is plain from experience, that with respect to every sensitive being, within the reach of our observation, with respect to ourselves in particular, this is the general law of nature, “That the simple productions of nature, which are useful to us, are also agreeable to us,a and the pernicious, or useless, are made disagreeable, or give pain. Our external sensations are, no doubt, often painful, when our bodies are in a dangerous state, when they want supplies of nourishment, or when any thing external would be injurious to them. But if it appears that the general laws are wisely instituted, and it be necessary to the good of a system of agents to be under the influence of general laws, upon which there is occasion for prudence and activity; the particular pains occasioned by a necessary law of sensation, can be no objection against the goodness of the author. Now that there is no room for complaint that our external sense of pain is made too acute, must appear from the multitudes we daily see<70> so careless of preserving the blessing of health, of which many are so prodigal as to lavish it away, and expose themselves to external pains for very trifling reasons. Can we repine at the friendly admonitions of nature, joined with some austerity, when we see they are scarce sufficient to restrain us from ruin?” To this let it be added, that the external and superficial parts of our bodies are the most sensible, and cause the greatest pain when they are in any wise hurtfully affected; because they are exposed to many various external objects, and do thus give us immediate notice so soon as they are affected by them; whereas the internal parts being more remote, cannot be so easily come at, and consequently are not liable to so many interruptions from without, and therefore need not such subtle sensation. Thus we experience (say anatomists) that the veins, arteries, bones, and the like, have little or no sensation at all.a
Several pains the necessary effects of a bodily organization.
II. But further, let it be considered, that of whatever materials a body be composed, or whatever its particular organization may be, it must in the nature of things, be liable to as many disorders as there are means of preventing or disturbing its natural course. In general, upon the supposition of our being capable of agreeable sensation, a proportionable degree of pain must ensue, upon any defect or excess whatsoever: because, if health consist in a certain balance or order, every deviation from that order, must be sickness or disease. Pleasant sensation must be produced in some order and method; that is, in order to it, a body must have a certain texture, and there must be a certain adjustment of external objects to that texture: but the result of this must be, that in a habitation like our earth, not made for any one species of animals, but fitted<71> for a variety of beings, somethings being adjusted to bodies of a different texture from ours, cannot but be contrary in their natures to ours, and so tend to a solutio continui30 in respect of them. This is as plain and as necessary, as it is, that two parts of matter cannot tally, unless they are fitted by their make to one another. In other words, it is necessary in the nature of things, that bodies should have each a particular mechanism fitted for a certain end, or for certain enjoyments: and to every material mechanism, as there must be something congruous, in order to the having agreeable sensations; so in a material world, replenished with various animals, in order to make nature as rich and full with good as possible, some things will of necessity be incongruous, and consequently in some manner and degree pernicious to our particular mechanism, by being fitted to different bodies. For it is impossible but those objects, which are suitable to certain organizations, in order to affect them agreeably, must be incongruous to organizations of different forms; and being incongruous to them, they must have some tendency to hurt them. This is inevitably the result of the necessity of a thing’s having a certain texture, and certain qualities in a determinate degree, in order to its being suitably proportioned or congruous to another certain texture, with its qualities. All things cannot possibly be equally congruous to all different sorts of organization.
Pains are useful and proper monitors.
III. But if our organization be liable to be destroyed or hurted by certain objects, in consequence of the impossibility, “That the same texture should be equally well fitted to all sorts of external impressions, that may happen through the influence of those very laws of matter and motion, which are acknowledged to be necessary to the general good and beauty of the material world, and to our receiving many pleasures of various kinds from it:” if this be<72> the case, it is certainly fit that whatever external object is pernicious, or tends to disturb and hurt the mechanism of our bodies in any considerable degree, should be signified to us by some means or other: Now the method that nature takes is this; “It is generally some pleasant sensation which teaches us what tends to our preservation and well-being; and some painful one which shews us what is pernicious;” “we are directed by uneasy appetites when our bodies stand in need of nourishment;” “and in like manner, it is by a sense of pain excited in us, that we are warned of the dangerous tendency of bruises, wounds, violent labour, and other such hurtful causes.”31
Now the fitness of our being thus warned and admonished appears, because some warning is necessary; and there can be no other but what has been mentioned, except by knowledge of the natures of things, and their aptitudes to affect us agreeably or hurtfully. But knowledge is in the nature of things progressive, and can only be acquired gradually, as has been shewn, from experience, in proportion to our situation for making observations, and taking in ideas, and to our application to gather knowledge. The knowledge of nature is wisely left to be our own acquisition; and therefore some other warning, even that mentioned by painful sensations, is absolutely necessary to us. It is only some intuitive kind of knowledge of bodies, by immediate inspection (which is hardly conceivable) that could supply the place of admonitions by pain, in order to self-preservation. And if we had such an intuitive knowledge of things
