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within itself. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the
word "thought," is this matter in motion.
P. The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion
and thinking, and that the latter is the origin of the former.
V. Yes; and I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action
of mind--not of thinking. The unparticled matter, or God, in
quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And
the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is,
in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence;
how I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never know. But the
unparticled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within
itself, is thinking.
P. Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the
unparticled matter?
V. The matters of which man is cognizant, escape the senses in
gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of
water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous
ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in
one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas
more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that
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