substance devoid of parts, correspond successively with different parts
of space? But a very cogent question presents itself on this occasion:
if this distinct substance that is said to form one of the component
parts of man, be really what it is reported, and if it be not, it is not
what it is described; if it be unknown, if it be not pervious to the
senses; if it be invisible, by what means did the metaphysicians
themselves become acquainted with it? How did they form ideas of a
substance, that taking their own account of it, is not, under any of its
circumstances, either directly or by analogy, cognizable to the mind of
man? If they could positively achieve this, there would no longer be any
mystery in Nature: it would be as easy to conceive the time when all was
nothing, when all shall have passed away, to account for the production
of every thing we behold, as to dig in a garden or read a lecture.--
Doubt would vanish from the human species; there could no longer be any
difference of opinion, since all must necessarily be of one mind on a
subject so accessible to every enquirer.

But it will be replied, the materialist himself admits, the natural
philosophers of all ages have admitted, elements and atoms, beings
simple and indivisible, of which bodies are composed:--granted; they
have no more: they have also admitted that many of these atoms, many of
these elements, if not all, are unknown to them: nevertheless, these
simple beings, these atoms of the materialist, are not the same thing
with the spirit, or the soul of the metaphysician. When the natural
philosopher talks of atoms--when he describes them as simple beings, he
indicates nothing more than that they are homogeneous, pure, without
mixture: but then he allows that they have extent, consequently parts,
are separable by thought, although no other natural agent with which he
is acquainted is capable of dividing them: that the simple beings of
this genus are susceptible of motion--can impart action--receive