First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

respect to the particles, if we may so speak, spiritual to the world, or Spirits contained in the world.

§. XII.

Furthermore, if I were to act with PYTHAGORAS & HERACLITUS, according to their opinion, with one eye one would have to regard the Spirit of the World, and with the other, those two things which exist in the world: human Souls and Bodies alike. As far as human souls are concerned, the matter would be entirely clear, since whoever recognizes that these can easily be connected with the World Spirit on account of their homogeneous nature. As far as bodies are concerned, however, both the human body and all other mundane bodies to be joined to the world soul, this ancient, indissoluble knot would still remain complicated.

§. XIII.

It would have been incumbent upon BARANZANO to provide a more abundant declaration of his own mind: whether by a substance other than human souls he intended an understood corporeal substance, or an incorporeal one. If the former, then its bond with corporeal things would be in the open; but with souls, it would labor under the difficulty first indicated. To say nothing of the fact that it is absurd if one wishes to adorn a body with the title of soul, and to defend this: that a body is animated by a body, and likewise that a Spirit is animated by a body. If incorporeal, then it would have been his duty to delineate for us how the World Soul would enjoy a spiritual nature, and yet not one homogeneous with our souls. If he had executed this, perhaps, God willing, he would have produced something whose character and habit, prepared for both, could unite both the Body and Spirit of humans in turn.

§. XIV.

Of that ANONYMOUS physicist, NOLLIUS, and D. van der BECKE