possibility of the soul’s self-existence (if it is not to be one of these elements, or lodged in one); for if these opponents suppose that by virtue of the soul not being akin to the elements it is nowhere after death, they must propound, to begin with, the absence of the soul from the fleshly life as well, seeing that the body itself is nothing but a concourse of those elements; and so they must not tell us that the soul is to be found there either, independently vivifying their compound. If it is not possible for the soul to exist after death, though the elements do, then, I say, according to this teaching our life as well is proved to be nothing else but death. But if on the other hand they do not make the existence of the soul now in the body a question for doubt, how can they maintain its evanishment when the body is resolved into its elements? Then, secondly, they must employ an equal audacity against the God in this Nature too. For how can they assert that the intelligible and immaterial Unseen can be dis- solved and diffused into the wet and the soft, as also into the hot and the dry, and so hold together the universe in existence through being, though not of a kindred nature with the 1753 t@ mepléxovtt. Sifanus takes this of the surrounding atmosphere. So also Krabinger, “aere circumfuso,” just as above (182 A.) it does certainly mean the air, and Wolf quotes a passage to that effect from Marcus Ant- oninus and the present instance also. Still there is no reason that it should not here mean the body of the man, which is as it were a case retentive of the vital breath within; and the sense seems to require it. As to the construc- tion, although mop@dAvé is sometimes masculine in later Greek, yet it is much more likely that mepitaBévtog (not mepiteBévtos of the Paris Editt.) is the genitive absolute with tob owpatoc: tH mEepiéxovti would then very naturally refer to this.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
things which it penetrates, yet not thereby incapable of so penetrating them? Let them, therefore, remove from their system the very Deity Who upholds the world.
That is the very point, I said, upon which our adversaries cannot fail to have doubts; viz. that all things depend on God and are encompassed by Him, or, that there is any divinity at all transcending the physical world.
It would be more fitting, she cried, to be silent about such doubts, and not to deign to make any answer to such foolish and wicked propositions; for there is a Divine precept forbidding us to answer a fool in his folly; and he must be a fool, as the Prophet declares, who says that there is no God. But since one needs must speak, I will urge upon you an ar- gument which is not mine nor that of any human being (for it would then be of small value, whosoever spoke it), but an argument which the whole Creation enunciates by the medium of its wonders to the audience!”>4 of the eye, with a skilful and artistic utterance that reaches the heart. The Creation proclaims outright the Creator; for the very heavens, as the Prophet says, declare the glory of God with their unutterable words. We see the universal harmony in the wondrous sky and on the wondrous earth; how elements essentially opposed to each other are all woven together in an ineffable union to serve one common end, each contrib- uting its particular force to maintain the whole; how the unmingling and mutually repellent do not fly apart from each other by virtue of their peculiarities, any more than they are destroyed, when compounded, by such contrariety; how those elements which are naturally buoyant move downwards, the heat of the sun, for instance, descending in the rays, while the bodies which possess weight are lifted by becoming rarefied in vapour, so that water contrary to its nature ascends, being conveyed through the air to the upper regions; how too that fire of the firmament so penetrates the earth that even its abysses feel the heat; how the moisture of the rain infused into the soil generates, one though it be by nature, myriads of differing germs, and animates in due proportion each subject of its influence; how very swiftly the polar sphere revolves, how the orbits within it move the contrary way, with all 17> of the planets. We see all this with the piercing eyes of mind, nor can we fail to be taught by means of such a spectacle the eclipses, and conjunctions, and measured intervals that a Divine power, working with skill and method, is manifesting itself in this actual world, and, penetrating each portion, combines those portions with the whole and completes the 1754 But Dr. Hermann Schmidt sees even more than this in this bold figure. The Creation preaches, as it were, and its tones are first heard in our hearts (Evnxobvtos ti Kapd1a): and these tones are then reflected back from the heart to the contemplating eye, which thus becomes not a seeing only, but a hearing (axpoatrjc yivetat) organ, in its external activity. 1755 évappovious dmootdoets, i.e. to which the music of the spheres was due: see Macrobius, Somnium Sci- pionis, c. 4: for the “retrograde” motion of the planets above, see Joannes de Sacro Bosco, Sphera (1564), p. 47, sqq.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
whole by the portions, and encompasses the universe with a single all-controlling force, self-centred and self-contained, never ceasing from its motion, yet never altering the position which it holds.
And pray how, I asked, does this belief in the existence of God prove along with it the existence of the human soul? For God, surely, is not the same thing as the soul, so that, if the one were believed in, the other must necessarily be believed in.
She replied: It has been said by wise men that man is a little world!’ in himself and contains all the elements which go to complete the universe. If this view is a true one (and so it seems), we perhaps shall need no other ally than it to establish the truth of our concep- tion of the soul. And our conception of it is this; that it exists, with a rare and peculiar nature of its own, independently of the body with its gross texture. We get our exact knowledge of this outer world from the apprehension of our senses, and these sensational operations themselves lead us on to the understanding of the super-sensual world of fact and thought, and our eye thus becomes the interpreter of that almighty wisdom which is visible in the universe, and points in itself to the Being Who encompasses it. Just so, when we look to our inner world, we find no slight grounds there also, in the known, for conjecturing the un- known; and the unknown there also is that which, being the object of thought and not of sight, eludes the grasp of sense.
I rejoined, Nay, it may be very possible to infer a wisdom transcending the universe from the skilful and artistic designs observable in this harmonized fabric of physical nature; but, as regards the soul, what knowledge is possible to those who would trace, from any in- dications the body has to give, the unknown through the known?
Most certainly, the Virgin replied, the soul herself, to those who wish to follow the wise proverb and know themselves, is a competent!’ instructress; of the fact, I mean, that she is an immaterial and spiritual thing, working and moving in a way corresponding to her peculiar nature, and evincing these peculiar emotions through the organs of the body. For this bodily organization exists the same even in those who have just been reduced by death to the state of corpses, but it remains without motion or action because the force of the soul is no longer in it. It moves only when there is sensation in the organs, and not only that, but the mental force by means of that sensation penetrates with its own impulses and moves whither it will all those organs of sensation.
What then, I asked, is the soul? Perhaps there may be some possible means of delineating its nature; so that we may have some comprehension of this subject, in the way of a sketch.
Its definition, the Teacher replied, has been attempted in different ways by different writers, each according to his own bent; but the following is our opinion about it. The soul 1756 See On the Making of Man, c. viii. 5.
1757 ikavt). This is the reading of Codd. A and B (of Krabinger, but the common reading is ei kav 1)!
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
is an essence created, and living, and intellectual, transmitting from itself to an organized and sentient body the power of living and of grasping objects of sense, as long as a natural constitution capable of this holds together.
Saying this she pointed to the physician!”> $ who was sitting to watch her state, and said: There is a proof of what I say close by us. How, I ask, does this man, by putting his fingers to feel the pulse, hear in a manner, through this sense of touch, Nature calling loudly to him and telling him of her peculiar pain; in fact, that the disease in the body is an inflammatory one!7°?, and that the malady originates in this or that internal organ; and that there is such and such a degree of fever? How too is he taught by the agency of the eye other facts of this kind, when he looks to see the posture of the patient and watches the wasting of the flesh? As, too, the state of the complexion, pale somewhat and bilious, and the gaze of the eyes, as is the case with those in pain, involuntarily inclining to sadness, indicate the internal condi- tion, so the ear gives information of the like, ascertaining the nature of the malady by the shortness of the breathing and by the groan that comes with it. One might say that even the sense of smell in the expert is not incapable of detecting the kind of disorder, but that it notices the secret suffering of the vitals in the particular quality of the breath. Could this be so if there were not a certain force of intelligence present in each organ of the senses? What would our hand have taught us of itself, without thought conducting it from feeling to un- derstanding the subject before it? What would the ear, as separate from mind, or the eye or the nostril or any other organ have helped towards the settling of the question, all by themselves? Verily, it is most true what one of heathen culture is recorded to have said, that it is the mind that sees and the mind that hears! © Else, if you will not allow this to be true, you must tell me why, when you look at the sun, as you have been trained by your instructor to look at him, you assert that he is not in the breadth of his disc of the size he appears to the many, but that he exceeds by many times the measure of the entire earth. Do you not 1758 It may be noticed that besides the physician several others were present. Cf. 242 D, toig moAAoic TrapaKaOnpEvois 1759 Krabinger’s Latin “in intentione,” though a literal translation, hardly represents the full force of this passage, which is interesting because, the terms being used specially, if not only, of fevers or inflammation, it is evident that the speaker has her own illness in mind, and her words are thus more natural than if she spoke of patients generally. If év énttaoet is translated “at its height,” this will very awkwardly anticipate what follows, emi toodvés...r] Emitaoic. The doctor is supposed simply to class the complaint as belonging to the order of those which manifest themselves 51’ emitd&oews, as opposed to those which do so 81 dvéoews: he then descends to particulars, i.e. Emi toodvbe. The demonstrative in tHvde tHv onAcdyxvwv has the same force as in 16 év tHdE 8Eppov, 214 C, “such and such;” the nobler organs (viscera thoracis) of course are here meant. Gregory himself gives a list of them, 250 C.
1760 A trochaic line to this effect from the comedian Epicharmus is quoted by Theodoret, De Fide, p. 15.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
confidently maintain that it is so, because you have arrived by reasoning through phenomena at the conception of such and such a movement, of such distances of time and space, of such causes of eclipse? And when you look at the waning and waxing moon you are taught other truths by the visible figure of that heavenly body, viz. that it is in itself devoid of light, and that it revolves in the circle nearest to the earth, and that it is lit by light from the sun; just as is the case with mirrors, which, receiving the sun upon them, do not reflect rays of their own, but those of the sun, whose light is given back from their smooth flashing surface. Those who see this, but do not examine it, think that the light comes from the moon herself. But that this is not the case is proved by this; that when she is diametrically facing the sun she has the whole of the disc that looks our way illuminated; but, as she traverses her own circle of revolution quicker from moving in a narrower space, she herself has completed this more than twelve times before the sun has once travelled round his; whence it happens that her substance is not always covered with light. For her position facing him is not maintained in the frequency of her revolutions; but, while this position causes the whole side of the moon which looks to us to be illumined, directly she moves sideways her hemi- sphere which is turned to us necessarily becomes partially shadowed, and only that which is turned to him meets his embracing rays; the brightness, in fact, keeps on retiring from that which can no longer see the sun to that which still sees him, until she passes right across the sun’s disc and receives his rays upon her hinder part; and then the fact of her being in herself totally devoid of light and splendour causes the side turned to us to be invisible while the further hemisphere is all in light; and this is called the completion!”*!
of her waning. But when again, in her own revolution, she has passed the sun and she is transverse to his rays, the side which was dark just before begins to shine a little, for the rays move from the illumined part to that so lately invisible. You see what the eye does teach; and yet it would never of itself have afforded this insight, without something that looks through the eyes and uses the data of the senses as mere guides to penetrate from the apparent to the unseen. It is needless to add the methods of geometry that lead us step by step through visible delin- eations to truths that lie out of sight, and countless other instances which all prove that ap- prehension is the work ofan intellectual essence deeply seated in our nature, acting through the operation of our bodily senses.
1761 dnep 51) navteAts tod otoryEtov pEiwors A€yeta, “perfecta elementi diminutio;” émep referring to the dark “new” moon just described, which certainly is the consummation of the waning of the moon: though it is not itself a uetwotc.—This last consideration, and the use of 51, and the introduction of tod ototyetov, favour another meaning which might be given, i.e. by joining navteAns with tod oto1xetovu, and making dmep refer to the whole passage of the moon from full to new, “which indeed is commonly (but erroneously) spoken of as a substantial diminution of the elementary body itself,” as if it were a true and real decrease of bulk.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
But what, I asked, if, insisting on the great differences which, in spite of a certain quality of matter shared alike by all elements in their visible form, exist between each particular kind of matter (motion, for instance, is not the same in all, some moving up, some down; nor form, nor quality either), some one were to say that there was in the same manner in- 1762 45 well which effects corporated in, and belonging to, these elements a certain force these intellectual insights and operations by a purely natural effort of their own (such effects, for instance, as we often see produced by the mechanists, in whose hands matter, combined according to the rules of Art, thereby imitates Nature, exhibiting resemblance not in figure alone but even in motion, so that when the piece of mechanism sounds in its resonant part it mimics a human voice, without, however, our being able to perceive anywhere any mental force working out the particular figure, character, sound, and movement); suppose, I say, we were to affirm that all this was produced as well in the organic machine of our natural bodies, without any intermixture of a special thinking substance, but owing simply to an inherent motive power of the elements within us accomplishing!” by itself these opera- tions—to nothing else, in fact, but an impulsive movement working for the cognition of the object before us; would not then the fact stand proved of the absolute nonexistence!” of that intellectual and impalpable Being, the soul, which you talk of?
Your instance, she replied, and your reasoning upon it, though belonging to the counter- argument, may both of them be made allies of our statement, and will contribute not a little to the confirmation of its truth.
Why, how can you say that?
Because, you see, so to understand, manipulate, and dispose the soulless matter, that the art which is stored away in such mechanisms becomes almost like a soul to this material, in all the various ways in which it mocks movement, and figure, and voice, and so on, may be turned into a proof of there being something in man whereby he shows an innate fitness 1762 ef tiva ToUTWV Katd TOV adTOV Adyov cVVOVOIMEVHV TIC Eivor Agyor Sbvayty, k.t.A. The difficulty here is in tovtwv, which Krabinger takes as a partitive genitive after eivat, and refers to the “elements”; and this is perhaps the best way of taking it. But still, as Schmidt points out, it is rather the human body than the elements themselves that ought here to be spoken of as the efficient cause of thought: and so he would either refer toUtwv to tov avtov (“in the same way as these instances just given”), and compares Eurip. Helen., 6vopa 5€ tavtOV TH Eurs Exovod tig Sc&paptos HAAN (Matt. Gr. p. 706); or else would join tovtwv with the preceding didpopoc (with Codd. Mon. D, E).
1763 Cod. Mon. D, dmoteAovons. This seems a better reading than that preferred by Krabinger, dmotéAeopa eivon: for dmotéAgoua must be pressed to mean, in order to preserve the sense, “mere result,” i.e. something secondary, and not itself a principle or cause: the following 1, besides, cannot without awkwardness be referred to Evepyetav 1764 Reading ovoid obk &v dnodSerkvborto f tO UNS’ SAwe Evan; On the Soul and the Resurrection.
to think out within himself, through the contemplative and inventive faculties, such thoughts, and having prepared such mechanisms in theory, to put them into practice by manual skill, and exhibit in matter the product of his mind. First, for instance, he saw, by dint of thinking, that to produce any sound there is need of some wind; and then, with a view to produce wind in the mechanism, he previously ascertained by a course of reasoning and close obser- vation of the nature of elements, that there is no vacuum at all in the world, but that the lighter is to be considered a vacuum only by comparison with the heavier; seeing that the air itself, taken as a separate subsistence, is crowded quite full. It is by an abuse of language that a jar is said to be “empty”; for when it is empty of any liquid it is none the less, even in this state, full, in the eyes of the experienced. A proof of this is that a jar when put into a pool of water is not immediately filled, but at first floats on the surface, because the air it contains helps to buoy up its rounded sides; till at last the hand of the drawer of the water forces it down to the bottom, and, when there, it takes in water by its neck; during which process it is shown not to have been empty even before the water came; for there is the spectacle of a sort of combat going on in the neck between the two elements, the water being forced by its weight into the interior, and therefore streaming in; the imprisoned air on the other hand being straitened for room by the gush of the water along the neck, and so rushing in the contrary direction; thus the water is checked by the strong current of air, and gurgles and bubbles against it. Men observed this, and devised in accordance with this property of the two elements a way of introducing air to work their mechanism!”®. They made a kind of cavity of some hard stuff, and prevented the air in it from escaping in any direction; and then introduced water into this cavity through its mouth, apportioning the quantity of water according to requirement; next they allowed an exit in the opposite direction to the air, so that it passed into a pipe placed ready to hand, and in so doing, being violently constrained by the water, became a blast; and this, playing on the structure of the pipe, produced a note. Is it not clearly proved by such visible results that there is a mind of some kind in man, something other than that which is visible, which, by virtue of an invisible thinking nature of its own, first prepares by inward invention such devices, and then, when they have been so matured, brings them to the light and exhibits them in the subservient matter? For if it were possible to ascribe such wonders, as the theory of our opponents does, to the actual constitution of the elements, we should have these mechanisms building themselves spon- taneously; the bronze would not wait for the artist, to be made into the likeness of a man, but would become such by an innate force; the air would not require the pipe, to make a note, but would sound spontaneously by its own fortuitous flux and motion; and the jet of the water upwards would not be, as it now is, the result of an artificial pressure forcing it to 1765 According to an author quoted by Athenzeus (iv. 75), the first organist (bSpavAns), or rather organ- builder, was Ctesibius of Alexandria, about b.c. 200.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
move in an unnatural direction, but the water would rise into the mechanism of its own accord, finding in that direction a natural channel. But if none of these results are produced spontaneously by elemental force, but, on the contrary, each element is employed at will by artifice; and if artifice is a kind of movement and activity of mind, will not the very con- sequences of what has been urged by way of objection show us Mind as something other than the thing perceived?
That the thing perceived, I replied, is not the same as the thing not perceived, I grant; but I do not discover any answer to our question in such a statement; it is not yet clear to me what we are to think that thing not-perceived to be; all I have been shown by your argu- ment is that it is not anything material; and I do not yet know the fitting name for it. I wanted especially to know what it is, not what it is not.
We do learn, she replied, much about many things by this very same method, inasmuch as, in the very act of saying a thing is “not so and so,” we by implication interpret the very nature of the thing in question!”®°. For instance, when we say a “guileless,” we indicate a good man; when we say “unmanly,” we have expressed that a man is a coward; and it is possible to suggest a great many things in like fashion, wherein we either convey the idea hae’ or vice versd. Well, then, if one thinks so with of goodness by the negation of badness regard to the matter now before us, one will not fail to gain a proper conception of it. The question is,—What are we to think of Mind in its very essence? Now granted that the inquirer has had his doubts set at rest as to the existence of the thing in question, owing to the activities which it displays to us, and only wants to know what it is, he will have adequately discovered it by being told that it is not that which our senses perceive, neither a colour, nor a form, nor a hardness, nor a weight, nor a quantity, nor a cubic dimension, nor a point, nor anything else perceptible in matter; supposing, that is, that there does exist a something beyond all these.
1766 Remove comma after Cntovpévou, in Paris Editt.
1767 _ or vice versé, i.e. the idea of badness by the negation of goodness. Krabinger appositely quotes a passage from Plotinus: “Who could picture to himself evil as a specific thing, appearing as it does only in the absence of each good?...it will be necessary for all who are to know what evil is to have a clear conception about good: since even in dealing with real species the better take precedence of the worse; and evil is not even a species, but rather anegation.” Cf. Origen, In Johan. p. 66 A, m&oa 1 KaKia obdEv EoTLY, Emel Kai ODK Ov TUyXavEL. See also Gregory’s Great Catechism, cap. v. and vii.
1768 supposing, that is. This only repeats what was said above: “granted that the inquirer has had his doubts set at rest as to the existence of the thing.” It is the reading of Krabinger (ei 51] 11), and the best. Sifanus follows the less supported reading oiSev 5t1, which is open to the further objection that it would be absurd to say, “when aman learns that A is not B he knows that it is something else.” The reading of the Paris. Editt. 15n is unintelligible.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
Here I interrupted her discourse: If you leave all these out of the account I do not see how you can possibly avoid cancelling along with them the very thing which you are in search of. I cannot at present conceive to what, as apart from these, the perceptive activity is to cling. For on all occasions in investigating with the scrutinizing intellect the contents of the world, we must, so far as we put our hand!” at all on what we are seeking, inevitably touch, as blind men feeling along the walls for the door, some one of those things aforesaid; we must come on colour, or form, or quantity, or something else on your list; and when it comes to saying that the thing is none of them, our feebleness of mind induces us to suppose that it does not exist at all.
Shame on such absurdity! said she, indignantly interrupting. A fine conclusion this narrow-minded, grovelling view of the world brings us to! If all that is not cognizable by sense is to be wiped out of existence, the all-embracing Power that presides over things is admitted by this same assertion not to be; once a man has been told about the non-material and invisible nature of the Deity, he must perforce with such a premise reckon it as absolutely non-existent. If, on the other hand, the absence of such characteristics in His case does not constitute any limitation of His existence, how can the Mind of man be squeezed out of ex- istence along with this withdrawal one by one of each property of matter?
Well, then, I retorted, we only exchange one paradox for another by arguing in this way; for our reason will be reduced to the conclusion that the Deity and the Mind of man are identical, if it be true that neither can be thought of, except by the withdrawal of all the data of sense.
Say not so, she replied; to talk so also is blasphemous. Rather, as the Scripture tells you, say that the one is like the other. For that which is “made in the image” of the Deity neces- sarily possesses a likeness to its prototype in every respect; it resembles it in being intellectual, immaterial, unconnected with any notion of weight!7”° ment of its dimensions!””}; yet as regards its own peculiar nature it is something different , and in eluding any measurefrom that other. Indeed, it would be no longer an “image,” if it were altogether identical with that other; but!”7? just as in a minute particle of glass, when it happens to face the light, the complete disc of where we have A in that uncreate prototype we have a in the image; the sun is often to be seen, not represented thereon in proportion to its proper size, but so far as the minuteness of the particle admits of its being represented at all. Thus do the reflec- 1770 weight(dyxov). This is a Platonic word: it means the weight, and then (morally) the burden, of the body: not necessarily connected with the idea of swelling, even in Empedocles, v. 220; its Latin equivalent is “onus” in both meanings. Cf. Heb. xii. 1; dykov dmo00guevoi navta, “every weight,” or “all cumbrance.”
1771 Reading draotypatixryy. Cf. 239 A.
1772 GAN év oic...éKeivo...todTo.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
tions of those ineffable qualities of Deity shine forth within the narrow limits of our nature; and so our reason, following the leading of these reflections, will not miss grasping the Mind in its essence by clearing away from the question all corporeal qualities; nor on the other hand will it bring the pure!””?
and infinite Existence to the level of that which is perishable and little; it will regard this essence of the Mind as an object of thought only, since it is the “image” of an Existence which is such; but it will not pronounce this image to be identical with the prototype. Just, then, as we have no doubts, owing to the display of a Divine mys- terious wisdom in the universe, about a Divine Being and a Divine Power existing in it all which secures its continuance (though if you required a definition of that Being you would therein find the Deity completely sundered from every object in creation, whether of sense or thought, while in these last, too, natural distinctions are admitted), so, too, there is nothing strange in the soul’s separate existence as a substance (whatever we may think that substance to be) being no hindrance to her actual existence, in spite of the elemental atoms of the world not harmonizing with her in the definition of her being. In the case of our living bodies, composed as they are from the blending of these atoms, there is no sort of commu- nion, as has been just said, on the score of substance, between the simplicity and invisibility of the soul, and the grossness of those bodies; but, notwithstanding that, there is not a doubt that there is in them the soul’s vivifying influence exerted by a law which it is beyond the human understanding to comprehend!’”4, Not even then, when those atoms have again been dissolved!””° into themselves, has that bond of a vivifying influence vanished; but as, while the framework of the body still holds together, each individual part is possessed of a soul which penetrates equally every component member, and one could not call that soul hard and resistent though blended with the solid, nor humid, or cold, or the reverse, though it transmits life to all and each of such parts, so, when that framework is dissolved, and has returned to its kindred elements, there is nothing against probability that that simple and incomposite essence which has once for all by some inexplicable law grown with the growth of the bodily framework should continually remain beside the atoms with which it has been 1773 pure(axnpatw). perishable (€ntknpov). The first word is a favourite one with the Platonists; such as Plotinus, and Synesius. Gregory uses it in his funeral speech over Flacilla, “she passes with a soul unstained to the pure and perfect life”; and both in his treatise De Mortuis, “that man’s grief is real, who becomes conscious of the blessings he has lost; and contrasts this perishing and soiled existence with the perfect blessedness above.” 1774 dyw twvi KpEtttovi Tis dvOpwrivns KatdvoroEws. So just below apprjtw tii Adyw. The mode of the union of soul and body is beyond our comprehension. To refer these words to the Deity Himself (“incompre- hensible cause”), as Oehler, would make of them, as Schmidt well remarks, a “mere showy phrase.”
1775 dvadvdEvtwv. Krabinger reads &vadvodvtwvy, i.e. “returning”; as frequently in this treatise, and in N.T.
usage.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
blended, and should in no way be sundered from a union once formed. For it does not follow that because the composite is dissolved the incomposite must be dissolved with ie That those atoms, I rejoined, should unite and again be separated, and that this consti- tutes the formation and dissolution of the body, no one would deny. But we have to consider this. There are great intervals between these atoms; they differ from each other, both in position, and also in qualitative distinctions and peculiarities. When, indeed, these atoms have all converged upon the given subject, it is reasonable that that intelligent and undimen- sional essence which we call the soul should cohere with that which is so united; but once these atoms are separated from each other, and have gone whither their nature impels them, what is to become of the soul when her vesse is thus scattered in many directions? As a sailor, when his ship has been wrecked and gone to pieces, cannot float upon all the pieces at once!”’8