14. Not material: first, because each particle of matter is not cogitative.
But now let us see how they can satisfy
themselves, or others, that this eternal thinking Being is material.
I. I would ask them, whether they imagine that all matter, every particle of matter, thinks? This, I suppose, they
will scarce say; since then there would be as many eternal thinking beings as there are particles of matter, and so
an infinity of gods. And yet, if they will not allow matter as matter, that is, every particle of matter, to be as well
cogitative as extended, they will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative being out of
incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended parts, if I may so speak.