310 NEW SYSTEM 



it always remains the same machine it originally was, 

 being merely transformed through different foldings 

 [plis] it receives, and sometimes expanded, sometimes 

 contracted and, as it were, concentrated, when we think 

 that it is lost. 



ii. Further, by means of the soul or form, there is a 

 real unity which corresponds to what in us is called the 

 Ego ; but this cannot be the case in regard to the machines 

 of art or to mere material mass, however well organized 

 it may be, which can be considered only as an army or 

 a flock, or as a pond full of fish 49 , or as a watch com- 

 posed of springs and wheels. Nevertheless if there were 

 no real substantial units [unites] there would be nothing 

 substantial or real in the collection. It was this that 

 compelled M. Cordemoi 50 to give up .Descartes and to 

 adopt Democritus's doctrine of atoms in order to find 

 a real unit [unite]. But atoms of matter are contrary to 

 reason, besides being still composed of parts, since the 

 invincible attachment of one part to another (even if 

 it could rationally be conceived or supposed) would not 



49 '"When I say "I," I speak of one substance only; but an 

 army, a flock, a pond full of fish, even though it were frozen and 

 had become solid with all the fish in it, will always be a collection 

 of several substances.' First Draft (G. iv. 473). Cf. Introduction, 

 Part iii. pp. 96-98. 



50 Ge"raud de Cordemoi (born early in the seventeenth century, 

 died 1684"), a French Cartesian, arrived independently at an 

 Occasionalist position, about the same time as Geulincx developed 

 his more famous system. See Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, 

 bk. iii. ch. 2. His most important philosophical work is Le discerne- 

 ment du corps et de I'dme (1666), and it was in this book that he so far 

 gave up Descartes as to adopt a theory of atoms. Cf. Leibniz's 

 Lettre a la Princesse Sophie (1705) (G. vii. 561) : 'M. Cordemoi, seeing 

 that compound things must be the result of simple things, was 

 forced, Cartesian though he was, to have recourse to atoms, 

 abandoning his master. . . .' Also Lettre a Arnauld (1686) (G. ii. 78) : 

 ' M. Cordemoi ... in order to account for the substantial unity in 

 bodies, felt obliged to admit atoms or indivisible extended bodies 

 in order to find something fixed to constitute a simple being. . . . 

 He appears to have recognized something of the truth, but he had 

 not yet seen in what the real notion of a substance consists.' 

 Cordemoi, however, was more devoted to history than to philo- 

 sophy. 



