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CH. V.] Such and many other such objections may be urged against those who represent Vital Principle as an intimate combination of motion and number; as it is not only impossible therefrom to give any definition of Vital Principle, but we affirm that it cannot even account for one of its accidents. And this would be evident to any one who should attempt, by this theory, to explain the affections and functions of the Vital Principle,—its reasonings, sensations, pleasures, pains, and other such manifestations; for it would be difficult, as we have already said, to form even a conjecture concerning them from it.

Now three modes of defining Vital Principle have been transmitted to us: some have represented it as the most mobile of entities from being self-motive; some as the most attenuated, and others again as the most incorporeal of entities; but we have already reviewed those opinions, and shewn how very questionable and contradictory they are. There remains for us then only to consider in what sense Vital Principle can be said to be derived from the elements. This opinion has been adopted in order to explain how the Vital Principle can perceive and recognise all beings and things; but it necessarily involves many and weighty objections. The supporters of this opinion lay it down as a fact that like recognises like, which is very much like assuming that Vital Principle is, in some way, the things themselves;