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 confessedly superior to matter, who shall say that ideas may not be so managed as to produce matter? So by continually brooding over the ideas—say of wealth—contained in a pipe the smoker might be surprised by one day seeing the ideas take visible form in the shape of gold, silver, and broad lands. But this hath not yet been accomplished, and as far as I can judge is not at present likely to be, which is much to be regretted and deplored. And as to the atomic theory it is clear that it is not possible that, except during the very act of smoking, the atoms can influence the pipe at all, and since the most subtile part of the anamnesis is its comprehension of what preceded and what succeeded, this is left altogether unexplained, or only to be explained in an unnatural and improbable manner. So let the hypothesis of Jacobulus be adjudged the conqueror, and with this let us end the matter.

Next, by way of disputation, I will take