arms in
his limbs, has yet hands, whose dexterity to make artificial weapons
surpasses all that nature has bestowed upon beasts. Thus man either
pierces with his darts or draws into his snares, masters, and leads
in chains the strongest and fiercest animals. Nay, he has the skill
to tame them in their captivity, and to sport with them as he
pleases. He teaches lions and tigers to caress him: and gets on
the back of elephants.

SECT. XLIII. Of the Soul, which alone, among all Creatures, Thinks
and Knows.

But the body of man, which appears to be the masterpiece of nature,
is not to be compared to his thought. It is certain that there are
bodies that do not think: man, for instance, ascribes no knowledge
to stone, wood, or metals, which undoubtedly are bodies. Nay, it is
so natural to believe that matter cannot think, that all
unprejudiced men cannot forbear laughing when they hear any one
assert that beasts are but mere machines; because they cannot
conceive that mere machines can have such knowledge as they pretend
to perceive in beasts. They think it to be like children's playing,
and talking to their puppets, the ascribing any knowledge to mere
machines. Hence it is that the ancients themselves, who knew no
real substance but the body, pretended, however, that the soul of a
man was a fifth element, or a sort of quintessence without name,
unknown here below, indivisible, immutable, and altogether celestial
and divine, because they could not conceive that the terrestrial
matter of the four elements could think, and know itself:
Aristoteles quintam quandam naturam censet esse, e qua sit mens.
Cogitare enim, et providere, et discere, et docere. . . . in horum
quatuor generum nullo inesse putat; quintum genus adhibet vacans
nomine.

SECT. XLIV. Matter Cannot Think.

But let us suppose whatever you please, for I will not enter the
lists with any sect of philosophers: here is an alternative which
no philosopher can avoid. Either matter can become a thinking
substance, without adding anything to it, or matter cannot think at
all, and so what thinks in us is a substance distinct from matter,
and which is united to it. If matter can acquire the faculty of
thinking without adding anything to it, it must, at least, be owned
that all matter does not think, and that even some matter that now
thinks did not think fifty years ago; as, for instance, the matter
of which the body of a young man is made up