mechanically - whereas what is natural must be such as could become distinctly conceivable by anyone admitted into the secrets of things. This distinction between what is natural and explicable and what is miraculous and inexplicable removes all the difficulties. To reject it would be to uphold something worse than occult qualities, and thereby to renounce philosophy and reason, 'giving refuge to ignorance and laziness by means of an irrational system which maintains not only that there are qualities which we do not understand - of which there are only too many - but further that there are some which could not be comprehended by the greatest intellect if God gave it every possible opportunity, i.e. [qualities] which are either miraculous or without rhyme or reason. And indeed it would be without rhyme or reason for God to perform miracles in the ordinary course of events. So this idle hypothesis would destroy not only our philosophy which seeks reasons but also the divine wisdom which provides them.
  As for thought, it is certain, as our author more than once acknowledges, that it cannot be an intelligible modification of matter and be comprehensible and explicable in terms of it. That is, a sentient or thinking being is not a mechanical thing like a watch or a ¥mill: one cannot conceive of sizes and shapes and motions combining mechanically to produce something which thinks?and senses too, in a mass where [formerly] there was nothing of the kind Ñ something which would likewise be extinguished by the machineÕs going out of order. So sense and thought are not something which is natural to matter?and there are only two ways in which they could occur in it: through GodÕs combining it with a substance to which thought is natural, or through his putting thought into it by a miracle. On this topic I am therefore entirely in agreement with the Cartesians, except that I include the beasts and believe that they too have sense, and souls which are properly described as immaterial and are as imperishable as atoms are according to Democritus and ¥Gassendi; whereas the Cartesians have been needlessly perplexed over the souls of beasts. Not knowing what to do about them if they are preserved (since they have failed to hit on the idea of the preservation of the animal in miniature), they have been driven to deny - contrary to all appearances and to the general opinion of mankind - that beasts even have sense. But if someone said that God could at least join the faculty of thought to a machine which was made ready [for it], I should reply that if that were done, and if God added this faculty to matter without at the same time infusing into it a substance