St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq.

London

1754

"But a nature capable of sensation, that is of perception, that is of thought (to say nothing of spontaneous motion, of memory, nor of the passions) cannot be incapable of another mode of thinking, any more than finite extension can be capable of one figure alone, or a piece of wax that receives the impression of one seal cannot receive that of another."

[...] An argument fairly drawn from the power of God will determine me at any time and on any occasion; though it does not determine these men who insist so much upon it, when they hope to make it serve their purpose by an unfair application of it. I am persuaded that God can make material systems capable of thought, not only because I must renounce one of the kinds of knowledge that he has given me, and the first though not the principal in the order of knowing, or admit that he has done so: but because the original principles and many of the properties of matter being alike unknown to me, he has not shewn me that it implies any contradiction to assert a material thinking substance. This now, which implies no contradiction, except it be with their precarious hypothetical ideas, these great asserters of the divine power deny. But at the same time they draw another argument unfairly from this very power, by assigning it as the cause of an effect which does manifestly imply contradiction. It implies contradiction manifestly, to say that a substance capable of thought by its nature, in one degree or instance, is by its nature incapable of it in another. God may limit the exercise of this power, no doubt, in his creatures variously, according to their different organizations, or to the imperceptible differences that there may be in the atoms that compose their bodies, or by other causes, absolutely inconceivable. This happens to other animals: it happens to men, and the largest understanding is limited in the exercise of its mental faculties. But a nature capable of sensation, that is of perception, that is of thought (to say nothing of spontaneous motion, of memory, nor of the passions) cannot be incapable of another mode of thinking, any more than finite extension can be capable of one figure alone, or a piece of wax that receives the impression of one seal cannot receive that of another.
(Essay I, §5; vol. iii, pp. 531-2)

Impressions::Wax::Seal

Reading

At least 5 entries in ESTC (1754, 1777, 1793).

See "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq." in the third volume of David Mallet's The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London : [s.n.], Printed in the Year 1754). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC>

Text from the third volume of The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne: 1793). <Link to Google Books>

Reading also in the 1967 reprint of The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844).

03/14/2014