--he conjectured he was not only a distinct being, but that he was set
apart, with different energies, from all the other beings in Nature;
that he was of a more simple essence having nothing in common with any
thing by which he was surrounded; nothing that connected him with all
that he beheld.

It is from thence has successively sprung his notions of SPIRITUALITY,
IMMATERIALITY, IMMORTALITY; in short, all those vague unmeaning words he
has invented by degrees, in order to subtilize and designate the
attributes of the unknown power, which he believes he contains within
himself; which he conjectures to be the concealed principle of all his
visible actions when man once imbibes an idea that he cannot comprehend,
he meditates upon it until he has given it a complete personification:
Thus he saw, or fancied he saw, the igneous matter pervade every thing;
he conjectured that it was the only principle of life and activity; he
proceeded to embody it; he gave it his own form; called it JUPITER, and
ended by worshipping this image of his own creation, as the power from
whom he derived every good he experienced, every evil he sustained. To
crown the bold conjectures he ventured to make on this internal motive-
power, he supposed, that different from all other beings, even from the
body that served to envelope it, it was not bound to undergo
dissolution; that such was its perfect simplicity, that it could not be
decomposed, nor even change its form; in short, that it was by its
essence exempted from those revolutions to which he saw the body
subjected, as well as all the compound beings with which Nature is
filled.

Thus man, in his own ideas, became double; he looked upon himself as a
whole, composed by the inconceivable assemblage of two different, two
distinct natures, which have no point of analogy between themselves: he