with the body, submitted to the impulse of beings, who act on him
necessarily, according to their various properties. Wine taken in too
great a quantity, necessarily disturbs his ideas, causes confusion in
his corporeal functions, occasions disorder in his mental faculties.

If there really existed a being in Nature, with the capability of moving
itself by its own peculiar energies, that is to say, able to produce
motion, independent of all other causes, such a being would have the
power of arresting itself, or of suspending the motion of the universe;
which is nothing more than an immense chain of causes linked one to
another, acting and re-acting by necessary immutable laws, and which
cannot be changed, which are incapable of being suspended, unless the
essences of every thing in it were changed, without the properties of
every thing were annihilated. In the general system of the world,
nothing more can be perceived than a long series of motion, received and
communicated in succession, by beings capacitated to give impulse to
each other: it is thus, that each body is moved by the collision of some
other body. The invisible motion of some soul is to be attributed to
causes concealed within himself; he believes that it is moved by itself,
because he does not see the springs which put it in motion, or because
he conceives those powers are incapable of producing the effects he so
much admires: but, does he more clearly conceive, how a spark in
exploding gunpowder, is capable of producing the terrible effects he
witnesses? The source of his errors arise from this, that he regards his
body as gross and inert, whilst this body is a sensible machine, which
has necessarily an instantaneous conscience the moment it receives an
impression; which is conscious of its own existence by the recollection
of impressions successively experienced; memory by resuscitating an
impression anteriorly received, by detaining it, or by causing an
impression which it receives to remain, whilst it associates it with