ter as matter, that
is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, they
will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative
being out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended
parts, if I may so speak.... Every particle of matter, as matter, is
capable of all the same figures and motions of any other, and I challenge
any one in his thoughts to add anything else to one above another." Now, as
we have seen, Locke himself has shown in his other trains of argument that
this challenge is thoroughly futile as a refutation of possibilities; but
the point to which I now wish to draw attention is this--It does not follow
because certain and highly complex collocations of material particles may
be supposed capable of thinking, that therefore every particle of matter
must be regarded as having this attribute. We have innumerable analogies in
nature of a certain collocation of matter and force producing certain
results which another somewhat similar collocation could not produce: in
such cases we do not assume that all the resulting attributes of the one
collocation must be presented also by the other--still less that these
resulting attributes must belong to the primary qualities of matter and
force. Hence, it is not fair to assume that thought must either be inherent
in every particle of matter, or else not producible by any possible
collocation of such particles, unless it has previously been shown that so
to produce it by any possible collocation is in the nature of things
impossible. But no one could refute this fallacy better than Locke himself
has done in some of the passages already quoted from his other train of
reasoning.

But to continue the quotation:--"If, therefore, it be evident that
something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evident that
that something must necessarily be a cogitative being; for it is as
impossible [_inconceivable_] that incogitative matter should produce a
cogitative being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should
produce a positive being or matter." Again,--"For unthinking particles of
matter, however put together, can have [_can be taught to have_] nothing
thereby added to them, but a new relation of position, which it is
impossible [_inconceivable_] should give thought and knowledge to them."

It is unnecessary to multiply these quotations, for, in effect, they would
all be merely repetitions of one a