material or no. But herein, I suppose, lies the danger and deceit of
that supposition:--there being no way to avoid the demonstration,
that there is an eternal knowing Being, men devoted to matter, would
willingly have it granted, that that knowing Being is material;
and then, letting slide out of their minds, or the discourse, the
demonstration whereby an eternal KNOWING Being was proved necessarily
to exist, would argue all to be matter, and so deny a God, that is, an
eternal cogitative Being: whereby they are so far from establishing,
that they destroy their own hypothesis. For, if there can be, in their
opinion, eternal matter, without any eternal cogitative Being, they
manifestly separate matter and thinking, and suppose no necessary
connexion of the one with the other, and so establish the necessity of
an eternal Spirit, but not of matter; since it has been proved already,
that an eternal cogitative Being is unavoidably to be granted. Now, if
thinking and matter may be separated, the eternal existence of matter
will not follow from the eternal existence of a cogitative Being, and
they suppose it to no purpose.


14. Not material: First, because each Particle of Matter is not
cogitative.

But now let us see how they can satisfy themselves, or others, that this
eternal thinking Being is material.

I. I would ask them, whether they imagine that all matter, EVERY
PARTICLE OF MATTER, thinks? This, I suppose, they will scarce say;
since then there would be as many eternal thinking beings as there are
particles of matter, and so an infinity of gods. And yet, if they will
not allow matter as matter, that is, every particle of matter, to be as