| The perception consists of parts. |
| These parts are so situated, as to afford us the notion of distance and contiguity; of length, breadth, and thickness. |
| The termination of these three dimensions is what we call figure. |
| This figure is moveable, separable, and divisible. |
| Mobility, and separability are the distinguishing properties of extended objects. |
| And to cut short all disputes, the very idea of extension is copyed from nothing but an impression, and consequently must perfectly agree to it. |
| To say the idea of extension agrees to any thing, is to say it is extended. |
| The free-thinker may now triumph in his turn; and having found there are impressions and ideas really extended, may ask his antagonists, how they can incorporate a simple and indivisible subject with an extended perception? All the arguments of Theologians may here be retorted upon them. |
| Is the indivisible subject, or immaterial substance, if you will, on the left or on the right hand of the perception? Is it in this particular part, or in that other? Is it in every part without being extended? Or is it entire in any one part without deserting the rest? It is impossible to give any answer to these questions, but what will both be absurd in itself, and will account for the union of our indivisible perceptions with an extended substance. |
| This gives me an occasion to take a-new into consideration the question concerning the substance of the soul; and though I have condemned that question as utterly unintelligible, yet I cannot forbear proposing some farther reflections concerning it. |
| I assert, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance is a true atheism, and will serve to justify all those sentiments, for which Spinoza is so universally infamous. |
| From this topic, I hope at least to reap one advantage, that my adversaries will not have any pretext to render the present doctrine odious by their declamations, when they see that they can be so easily retorted on them. |
| The fundamental principle of the atheism of Spinoza is the doctrine of the simplicity of the universe, and the unity of that substance, in which he supposes both thought and matter to inhere. |
| There is only one substance, says he, in the world; and that substance is perfectly simple and indivisible, and exists every where, without any local presence. |
| Whatever we discover externally by sensation; whatever we feel internally by reflection; all these are nothing but modifications of that one, simple, and necessarily existent being, and are not possest of any separate or distinct existence. |
| Every passion of the soul; every configuration of matter, however different and various, inhere in the same substance, and preserve in themselves their characters of distinction, without communicating them to that subject, in which they inhere. |
| The same substratum, if I may so speak, supports the most different modifications, without any difference in itself; and varies them, without any variation. |
| Neither time, nor place, nor all the diversity of nature are able to produce any composition or change in its perfect simplicity and identity. |
| I believe this brief exposition of the principles of that famous atheist will be sufficient for the present purpose, and that without entering farther into these gloomy and obscure regions, I shall be able to shew, that this hideous hypothesis is almost the same with that of the immateriality of the soul, which has become so popular. |
| To make this evident, let us [Part II, SECT. 6.] remember, that as every idea is derived from a preceding perception, it is impossible our idea of a perception, and that of an object or external existence can ever represent what are specifically different from each other. |
| Whatever difference we may suppose betwixt them, it is still incomprehensible to us; and we are obliged either to conceive an external object merely as a relation without a relative, or to make it the very same with a perception or impression. |