that all particular substances flow and are carried, some
of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves, and others receiving
things coming from elsewhere; and that the things to which there is
made an accession or from which there is a decession by numbers and
multitudes, do not remain the same, but become others by the said
accessions, the substance receiving a change; and that these changes
are not rightly called by custom increasings or diminutions, but it is
fitter they should be styled generations and corruptions, because they
drive by force from one state to another, whereas to increase and be
diminished are passions of a body that is subject and permanent. These
things being thus in a manner said and delivered, what would these
defenders of evidence and canonical masters of common conceptions have?
Every one of us (they say) is double, twin-like, and composed of a
double nature; not as the poets feigned of the Molionidae, that they in
some parts grow together and in some parts are separated,--but every one
of us has two bodies, having the same color, the same figure, the same
weight and place.... These things were never before seen by any man;
but these men alone have discerned this composition, doubleness, and
ambiguity, how every one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the
other quality; and the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither
increasing nor being diminished nor remaining altogether; the other
remains and increases and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary
to the former, with which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and
confounded, that it exhibits not any difference to be perceived by
sense. Indeed, Lynceus is said to have penetrated stones and oaks with
his sight; and a certain man sitting on a watch-tower in Sicily beheld
the ships of the Carthaginians setting forth from their harbor, which
was a day and a night's sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides
are said to have made chariots that might be covered with the wings of
a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none
ever discerned or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived
ourselves to be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other
remaining the same from our birth even to our death. But I make the
discourse more simple, since they make four subjects in every one, or
rather every one of us to be four. But two are sufficient to show their
absurdity. For if, when we hear Penth