ferentia, when as it is solidly and fully proved in Philosophy, That Matter of its own Nature, or in it self, is endued with no Perception, Life, nor Motion. And besides, we are to remember that we here do not treat of the Existence of things, but of their intelligible Notion and Essence.
SECT. XVIII.
And if the Notion or Essence is so easily understood in Nature Corporeal or Body, I do not see but in the Species immediately opposite to Body, viz. Spirit, there may be found the same facility of being understood. Let us try therefore, and from the Law of Opposites let us define a Spirit, an Immaterial Substance intrinsecally endued with Life and the faculty of Motion. This slender and brief Definition that thus easily slows without any noise, does comprehend in general the whole Nature of a Spirit; Which lest by reason of its exility and brevity it may prove less perceptible to the Understanding, as a Spirit is to the sight, I will subjoin a more full Explication, that it may appear to all, that this Definition of a Spirit is nothing inferiour to the Definition of a Body as to clearness and perspicuity. And that by this method which we now fall upon, a ful and perfect knowledge and understanding of the nature of a Spirit may be attained to.
Go to therefore, let us take notice through all the degrees of the Definitum, or Thing, defined, what precise and immediate properties each of them contain, from whence at length a most distinct and perfect knowledge of the whole Definitum will discover it self. Let us begin then from the top of all, and first let us take notice that a Spirit is Ens, or a Being, and from this very same that it is a Being; that it is also One, that it is True, and that it is Good; which are the three acknowledged Properties of Ens in Metaphysicks, that it exists sometime, and somewhere, and is in some sort extended, as is shewn Enchirid. Metaphys. cap. 2. sect. 10. which three latter terms are plain of themselves. And as for the three former, that One signifies undistinguished or un-divided
