exact and inviolable a society? Will any man say it was chance? If
he does, will he be able either to understand what he means, or to
make it understood by others? Has chance, by a concourse of atoms,
hooked together the parts of the body with the mind? If the mind
can be hooked with some parts of the body, it must have parts
itself, and consequently be a perfect body, in which case, we
relapse into the first answer, which I have already confuted. If,
on the contrary, the mind has no parts, nothing can hook it with
those of the body, nor has chance wherewithal to tie them together.

In short, my alternative ever returns, and is peremptory and
decisive. If the mind and body are a whole made up of matter only,
how comes it to pass that this matter, which yesterday did not, has
this day begun to think? Who is it that has bestowed upon it what
it had not, and which is without comparison more noble than
thoughtless matter? What bestows thought upon it, has it not
itself, and how can it give what it has not? Let us even suppose
that thought should result from a certain configuration, ranging,
and degree of motion a certain way, of all the parts of matter:
what artificer has had the skill to find out all those just, nice,
and exact combinations, in order to make a thinking machine? If, on
the contrary, the mind and body are two distinct natures, what power
superior to those two natures has been able to unite and tie
together without the mind's assent, or so much as its knowing which
way that union was made? Who is it that with such absolute and
supreme command over-rules both minds and bodies, and keeps them in
society and correspondence, and under a sort of incomprehensible
policy?