SECT. XXVIII. It is impossible Beasts should have Souls.


If you affirm that beasts have souls different from their machines,
I immediately ask you, "Of what nature are those souls entirely
different from and united to bodies? Who is it that knew how to
unite them to natures so vastly different? Who is it that has such
absolute command over so opposite natures, as to put and keep them
in such a regular and constant a society, and wherein mutual
agreement and correspondence are so necessary and so quick?

If, on the contrary, you suppose that the same matter may sometimes
think, and sometimes not think, according to the various wrangling
and configurations it may receive, I will not tell you in this place
that matter cannot think; and that one cannot conceive that the
parts of a stone, without adding anything to it, may ever know
themselves, whatever degree of motion, whatever figure, you may give
them. I will only ask you now wherein that precise ranging and
configuration of parts, which you speak of, consists? According to
your opinion there must be a degree of motion wherein matter does
not yet reason, and then another much like it wherein, on a sudden,
it begins to reason and know itself. Now, who is it that knew how
to pitch upon that precise degree of motion? Who is it that has
discovered the line in which the parts ought to move? Who is it
that has measured the dimensions so nicely as to find out and state
the bigness and figure every part must have to keep all manner of
proportions between themselves in the whole? Who is it that has
regulated the outward form by which all those bodies are to be
stinted? In a word, who is it that has found all the combinations
wherein matter thinks, and without the least of which matter must