However, I grant that the word one can be applied to a gathering together of inanimate bodies although no substantial form unites them, just as I am able to say there is one rainbow, there is one herd. But this is a unity, phenomenal or of thought, which is not sufficient for the reality back of the phenomenon. [If we take as the matter of the corporeal substance, not its formless mass but a secondary matter which is the manifold of substances whose mass constitutes the whole body, it can be said that these substances are parts of this matter; just as those which enter into our body make a part of it. It is the same with other corporeal substances as it is with our body, which is the matter and the soul, which is the form of our substance; and I find no more difficulty in this respect than is found in the case of man, in regard to whom all are agreed upon this point. The difficulties which come up in these subjects are due, among other reasons, to the fact that we have not ordinarily a sufficiently distinct conception of the whole and of the parts, because essentially the part is nothing else than an immediate requisite for the whole and is, in a way, homogeneous with it; therefore, the parts can constitute a whole, whether there is a real unity or not. It is true that the whole, which has a real unity, may continue as the same individual in the strictest sense even when it loses or gains parts as our experience shows us. In these cases the parts are immediate requisites only

pro tempore but if, however, we understand by the term

matter something which will always be essential to the same substance we might, in the sense of certain of the Schoolmen, understand by this the primitive passive power of a substance and, in this sense, the matter would be neither extended nor divisible although it would be the principle of divisibility or of that which stands for divisibility in the substance. However, I do not wish to argue regarding the use of terms.]

3. You object that I admit substantial forms only in the case of animated bodies- a position which I do not, however, remember to have taken. Now, you continue: all organized bodies being

plura entia the forms or souls by no means suffice to constitute a being, but rather there must be several beings so that the body can be animated. I reply that supposing there is a soul or entelechy in beasts or in other corporeal substances, we must reason in regard to them as we all reason regarding man, who is a being endowed with a real unity; his soul gives him this unity although the mass of his body is divided into organs, ducts, humors, spirits, and that the parts are doubtless full of an infinity of other corporeal substances endowed with their own entelechies. As this third objection agrees in substance with the preceding the former solution will suffice.

4. You think that it is without a basis, when souls are attributed to animals, and you think that if they had souls there would be a mind, that is to say, a substance which thinks since we know only bodies and spirits and have no idea of any other substance; now, that an oyster thinks or a worm thinks, it is difficult to believe. This objection applies equally to all those who are not Cartesians. Besides the fact, however, that that cannot be entirely unreasonable, which the whole human race has always accepted, namely that animals have feelings, I think I have shown that every substance is indivisible, and that consequently every corporeal substance must have a soul or at least an entelechy which has an analogy with the soul, because otherwise the body would be only a phenomenon.