easily believe, if he were assured that there are particular Spirits that penetrate and actuate this or that part of the Matter, which I contend that those Stories which I have related do evidently evince.
7. For I appeal to any one that knows what Fire and Aire is, whether they be not as truly a mere aggregation of loosned particles of the Matter as an heap of sand; only they are so little, that they are invisible and insensible in their distinct particularities, but as truly disjoyned Atomes (if I may so call what is still divisible) as the grains of sand we speak of.
8. Now this being supposed, which nothing but Ignorance can deny, we shall plainly discover that such things are done by Spirits, as we usually call them, as are altogether incompetible to any compages of these small grains or Atomes of Matter of which Aire and Fire do consist. For first, Either all these Grains or Atomes have Sense, Imagination and Understanding in them, or but some few, or but one only. If all or some few, it is plain that they are so many distinct intelligent Beings, and a distinct intelligent Being is a Person; so that this one person is many persons; which is plainly contradictious, at least foolishly ridiculous. But if the residence of Sense, Imagination and Understanding be plac'd in one, how is it possible that that one Atome should be able spontaneously to move all the rest? And the same reason would be if we should seat Sense and Reason in some few inward Atomes. For how could they bring away those behinde them, or carry on those on the side of them, or drive them before them, so as that they would not divide and be left behinde? And yet it is a shrewd presumption that the Seat of Sense is confined to some small compass in the Vehicle of a Spirit, it being so in the Body of a Man. For if it were not, but that every part of the Vehicle had Sense in it self, the external Object would seem in God knows how many places at once, and the Images of things would be either utterly confounded, or the Atomes, when they pat themselves upon their march, would mistake their mark, and following directly their sense, would of necessity break one from another and destroy the whole.
9. Again, It is manifest that that which has the power of Sensation in a Spirit has also the power of Memory, else they could not remember the Objects of Sense, if it were not one and the same thing in them that had both Sense and Memory: and that which remembers does also imagine, and that which imagines by the power of imagination transforms the Vehicle into various shapes and figures, and holds it there in that shape so long as it thinks good.
Now I demand, how can this possibly be done by either one or a few Particles or Atomes residing in any part of the Vehicle? How can they either hold together the other, or lay hold upon them, to restrain them and constringe them into this or that form, suppose of a Dog, Colt, or Man? But to say that Imagination is in every part of the Vehicle, and to admit those particles to imagine that have not so much as Sense (as the farr greater part seem not to have from what even now was intimated) is altogether unreasonable.
10. Thirdly, That which Lucretius alledges against the Immortality of the Soul, supposing it such a congeries of little Atomes as here Spirits
