effects, of which their experience cannot discover the true causes.
Ask a savage, what works your watch? He will answer, _it is a spirit_.
Ask the divines, what moves the universe? They answer, _it is a spirit_.


21. The savage, when he speaks of a spirit, affixes, at least, some
idea to the word; he means thereby an agent, like the air, the breeze,
the breath, that invisibly produces discernible effects. By subtilizing
every thing, the modern theologian becomes as unintelligible to
himself as to others. Ask him, what he understands by a spirit?
He will answer you, that it is an unknown substance, perfectly simple,
that has no extension, that has nothing common with matter. Indeed,
is there any one, who can form the least idea of such a substance?
What then is a spirit, to speak in the language of modern theology,
but the absence of an idea? The idea of _spirituality_ is an idea
without model.


22. Is it not more natural and intelligible to draw universal existence
from the matter, whose existence is demonstrated by all the senses,
and whose effects we experience, which we see act, move, communicate
motion, and incessantly generate, than to attribute the formation of
things to an unknown power, to a spiritual being, who cannot derive
from his nature what he has not himself, and who, by his spiritual
essence, can create neither matter nor motion? Nothing is more evident,
than that the idea they endeavour to give us, of the action of mind
upon matter, represents no object. It is an idea without model.


23. The material _Jupiter_ of the ancients could move, compose, destroy,