17. And that whether this corporeal system is in motion or at rest.
But further: this corporeal system either has all
its parts at rest, or it is a certain motion of the parts wherein its thinking consists. If it be perfectly at rest, it is but
one lump, and so can have no privileges above one atom.
If it be the motion of its parts on which its thinking depends, all the thoughts there must be unavoidably accidental
and limited; since all the particles that by motion cause thought, being each of them in itself without any thought,
cannot regulate its own motions, much less be regulated by the thought of the whole; since that thought is not the
cause of motion, (for then it must be antecedent to it, and so without it,) but the consequence of it; whereby
freedom, power, choice, and all rational and wise thinking or acting, will be quite taken away: so that such a
thinking being will be no better nor wiser than pure blind matter; since to resolve all into the accidental unguided
motions of blind matter, or into thought depending on unguided motions of blind matter, is the same thing: not to
mention the narrowness of such thoughts and knowledge that must depend on the motion of such parts. But there
needs no enumeration of any more absurdities and impossibilities in this hypothesis (however full of them it be)
than that before mentioned; since, let this thinking system be all or a part of the matter of the universe, it is
impossible that any one particle should either know its own, or the motion of any other particle, or the whole
know the motion of every particle; and so regulate its own thoughts or motions, or indeed have any thought
resulting from such motion.
