es a
thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of
external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.

[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be
reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed
of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action
really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the
action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects
_ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every
one of them.'

'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit
it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that
God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see
other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and
knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit
that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily
confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be [41]
necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according
to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of
the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of
the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's
hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties
than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It
puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon
another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey
their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real
action of their masters upon them;