I come to the point regarding the forms or the souls which I consider to be indivisible and indestructible. I am not the first one to hold this opinion. Parmenides, of whom Plato speaks with respect, as well as Melissus, held that there was neither generation nor corruption except in appearance. Aristotle takes the same position in Book 3, De caelo, chapter 2, and the author of

De diaeta, Book I., which is attributed to Hippocrates, says expressly that an animal cannot be born wholly as a new animal nor entirely destroyed. Albertus Magnus and John Bacon seem to have thought that the substantial forms were already concealed in matter from all time; Fernel has them descend from heaven, to say nothing of those who derive them from the soul of the world. These have all seen a part of the truth, but they have not developed it. Most of them believed in the transmigration and others in the traduction of souls, instead of thinking of the transmigration and transformation of an animal already formed. Others, not being able to explain the origin of the forms, have said that they begin by a true creation. Such a creation in time I admit only in the case of reasoning souls, and hold that all the forms which do not think were created at the same time that the world was. But they believe that this creation takes place all the time whenever the smallest worm is born. Philoponus, an ancient commentator upon Aristotle, in his book against Proclus, and Gabriel Biel seem to have been of this opinion. I think that St. Thomas considered the souls of beasts as indivisible. Our Cartesians go much further when they say that every soul and every true substantial form must be indestructible and ingenerable. This is why they refused souls to beasts, although M. Descartes, in a letter to M. Morus, says that he is not certain that they have no souls. Since no special objection is made to those who speak of perduring atoms, why is it found strange when the same is said of souls to which indivisibility should belong by their very nature, especially because, if we combine the position of the Cartesians regarding the substance and the soul, with the prevailing opinion regarding the souls of beasts, the indestructibility necessarily follows. It will be difficult to overcome this opinion which has been always and everywhere received and which has been broadcast, namely, that beasts have feelings. Now, if we grant that they have souls, what I hold regarding the indestructibility of the souls is not only necessary according to the Cartesians but it is important again in ethics and in religion, in order to controvert a dangerous tenet toward which several personages of intelligence are inclined and which the Italian philosophers, who are disciples of Averroes, have disseminated; namely, that when an animal dies the particular souls return to the soul of the world. This is in contradiction to my demonstration of the nature of the individual substance and cannot be conceived of distinctly, since every individual substance must always subsist apart when once it has commenced its being; that is why the truths which I advance are so important. Those who recognize that the beasts have souls should approve of them, the others at least should not find them strange.

To come, however, to your objections regarding this indestructibility:

1. I have held that we must admit in bodies something which may be truly a single being, since matter or extended mass in itself can never be more than plura entia, as St. Augustine, following Plato, has very truly observed. Now, I infer that there are not several beings where there is not even one which may be truly a being, and I hold that every multitude presupposes unity; to this you make various replies, but without touching the argument itself, which is unassailable; you use only arguments ad hominem and from inconveniences which would arise, and you try to show that what I say does not solve the difficulty. First of all, you are astonished, M., how I am able to make use of this reason, which would be apparent to M. Cordemoy who constitutes everything out of atoms, but which, from my position, as you think, would be necessarily false, since, leaving aside animated bodies that do not constitute the hundred thousand thousandth part of the universe, all the others would necessarily have to be

plura entia and the difficulty would thus come up again. From this I see, M., that I did not explain myself sufficiently to enable you to grasp my hypothesis, for, aside from the fact that I do not remember having said that there are no substantial forms excepting souls, I am far from saying that animated bodies constitute only a small proportion of the bodies in the world; for, I think rather that everything is full of animated bodies, and in my opinion there are incomparably more souls than M. Cordemoy has atoms. His atoms are finite in number, while I hold that the number of souls, or at least of forms, is wholly infinite, and that matter being divisible without end, no portion can be obtained so small that there are not in it animated bodies, or at least such as are endowed with a primitive entelechy, and (if you will permit me to use the word life so generally), with the vital principle, that is to say, with corporeal substances, of all of which it may be said in general that they are alive.