of that
distinguished man, and I could scarcely have believed it possible for
one so great to have put it forward if it had been less subtle. I can
hardly wonder enough that a philosopher who firmly resolved to make no
deduction except from self-evident principles, and to affirm nothing but
what he clearly and distinctly perceived, and who blamed all the
Schoolmen because they desired to explain obscure matters by occult
qualities, should accept a hypothesis more occult than any occult
quality.

What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and body? What
clear and distinct conception has he of thought intimately connected
with a certain small portion of matter? I wish that he had explained
this union by its proximate cause. But he conceived the mind to be so
distinct from the body that he was able to assign no single cause of
this union, nor of the mind itself, but was obliged to have recourse to
the cause of the whole universe, that is to say, to God. Again, I should
like to know how many degrees of motion the mind can give to that pineal
gland, and with how great a power the mind can hold it suspended. For I
do not understand whether this gland is acted on by the mind more slowly
or more quickly than by the animal spirits, and whether the movements of
the passions, which we have so closely bound with firm decisions, might
not be separated from them again by bodily causes, from which it would
follow that although the mind had firmly determined to meet danger, and
had joined to this decision the motion of boldness, the sight of the
danger might cause the gland to be suspended in such a manner that the
mind could think of nothing but flight. Indeed, since there is no
relation between the will and motion, so there is no comparison between
the power or strength of the body and that of the mind, and consequently
the strength of the body can never be determined by the strength of the
mind. It is to be remembered also that this gland is not found to be so
situated in the middle of the brain that it can be driven about so
easily and in so many ways, and that all the nerves are not extended to
the cavities of the brain.

Lastly, I omit all that Descartes asserts concerning the will and the
freedom of the will, since I have shown over and over again that it is
false. Therefore, inasmuch as the power of the mind, as I have shown
above, is determined by intelligence alone, we shall determine by the
knowledge of the m