Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

The True Intellectual System of the Universe

London

Richard Royston

1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"But as for that prodigious paradox of Atheists, that cogitation itself is nothing but local motion or mechanism, we could not have thought it possible, that ever any many should have given entertainment to such a conceit, but that this was rather a meer slander raised upon Atheists."

But as for that prodigious paradox of Atheists, that cogitation itself is nothing but local motion or mechanism, we could not have thought it possible, that ever any many should have given entertainment to such a conceit, but that this was rather a meer slander raised upon Atheists; were it not certain from the records of antiquity, that whereas the old religious atomists did, upon good reason, reduce all corporeal action (as generation, augmentation, and alteration) to local motion, or translation from place to place; (there being no other motion besides this conceivable in bodies) the ancient Atheizers of that philosophy (Leucippus and Democritus) not contented herewith, did really carry the business still on further, so as to make cogitation itself also nothing but local motion. As it is also certain, that a modern atheistick pretender to wit hath publickly owned this same conclusion, that mind is nothing else but local motion in the organick parts of man's body. These men have been sometimes indeed a little troubled with the phancy, apparition, or seeming of cogitation that is, the consciousness of it, as knowing not well what to make thereof; but then they put it off again, and satisfy themselves worshipfully with this, that phancy is but phancy, but the reality of cogitation nothing but local motion; as if there were not as much reality in phancy and consciousness, as there is in local motion. That, which inclined these men so much to this opinion, was only because they were sensible and aware of this, that if there were any other action, besides local motion admitted, there must needs be some other substance acknowledged, besides body. Cartesius indeed undertook to defend brute animals to be nothing else but machines; but then he supposed that there was nothing at all of cogitation in them, and consequently nothing of true animality or life, no more than is in an artificial automaton, as a wooden eagle, or the like: nevertheless, this was justly thought to be paradox enough. But that cogitation itself should be local motion, and [end page 846] men nothing but machines; this is such a paradox, as none but either a stupid and besotted, or else an enthusiastick, bigotical, or fanatick Atheist, could possibly give entertainment to. Nor are such men as these fit to be disputed with any more than a machine is.
(pp. 846-7)

Machine::Mechanism Uncategorized::Motion

Reading Samuel L. Macey's Clocks and the Cosmos: Time in Western Life and Thought. Archon Books: Hamden, CT, 1980. p. 82.

4 entries in ESTC (1678, 1732, 1723). An abridgment was published in 1732.

Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted and its Impossibility Demonstrated (London: Royston, 1678). <Link to EEBO>

See also Cudworth, Ralph. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part; Wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is confuted, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Printed for J. Walthoe, D. Midwinter, J. and J. Bonwick, W. Innys, R. Ware, 1743). <Link to ECCO>

12/13/2006