Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

London

Printed for James and John Knapton

1731

"But indeed this Opinion attributes as much Activity to the Mind, if at least the Agent Intelligence be a Part of it, as ours doth; as he would attribute as much Activity to the Sun, that should say the Sun had a Power of educing Light out of Night or the dark Air, as he that should say the Sun had a Power of exerting Light out of his own Body."

11. As for that Opinion, that the Conceptions of the Mind and intelligible Ideas or Reasons of the Mind should be raised out of the Phantasms by the strange Chymistry of an Agent Intelligence; This as it is founded on a Mistake of Aristotle's Meaning, who never dreamed of any such a Chimerical Agent Intelligence, as appears from the Greek Interpreters that best understood him; so it is very like to that other Opinion called Peripatetical, that asserts the Eduction of Immaterial Forms out of the Power of Matter; and as both of them arise from the fame Sottishness of Mind that would make Stupid and Senseless Matter the Original Source of all things; so there is the same Impossibility in both, that Perfection should be raised out of Imperfection, and that Vigour, Activity and awakened Energy, should ascend and emerge out of dull, sluggish, and drowsy Passion. But indeed this Opinion attributes as much Activity to the Mind, if at least the Agent Intelligence be a Part of it, as ours doth; as he would attribute as much Activity to the Sun, that should say the Sun had a Power of educing Light out of Night or the dark Air, as he that should say the Sun had a Power of exerting Light out of his own Body.
(IV.i.11, pp. 146-7)

Light::Sun Light::Sunlight Light::Darkness

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See Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (London: James and John Knapton, 1731). <Link to ECCO><Link to Google Books>

01/22/2012