What thinks in me must
be, as it were, a nothing of corporeal nature. How was I able to
know beings that have by nature no relation with my thinking being?
Certainly a being superior to those two natures, so very different,
and which comprehends them both in its infinity, must have joined
them in my soul, and given me an idea of a nature entirely different
from that which thinks in me.
SECT. LXII. The Idea of the Unity proves that there are Immaterial
Substances; and that there is a Being Perfectly One, who is God.
As for units, some perhaps will say that I do not know them by the
bodies, but only by the spirits; and, therefore, that my mind being
one, and truly known to me, it is by it, and not by the bodies, I
have the idea of unity. But to this I answer.
It will, at least, follow from thence that I know substances that
have no manner of extension or divisibility, and which are present.
Here are already beings purely incorporeal, in the number of which I
ought to place my soul. Now, who is it that has united it to my
body? This soul of mine is not an infinite being; it has not been
always, and it thinks within certain bounds. Now, again, who makes
it know bodies so different from it? Who gives it so great a
command over a certain body; and who gives reciprocally to that body
so great a command over the soul? Moreover, which way do I know
whether this thinking soul is really one, or whether it has parts?
I do not see this soul.
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