Carried away by his favorite idea, Clarke went so far as to write what we should not have expected from such a man, that: "In questions of this nature, when we speak of parts, we mean parts that are _separable_, composite, and disunited like those of matter, which for this reason is always a compound and never a simple substance. Matter is not one substance, but a composition of substances. This is why, _in my opinion, matter is incapable of thinking_. This incapacity does not proceed from extension, but from the parts being distinct substances, disunited, and independent of each other."[45] This explanation tends to destroy the simplicity of thinking beings; for by simplicity has always been understood the absolute wanting of all parts and not the absence of this or that kind of parts. Inseparability does not destroy the existence of parts; it merely asserts the force of cohesion. [45] Fragment of a Letter.--(I do not know what letter the author here refers to, but the same opinion in almost the same words may be found in Clarke's fourth and fifth letters to Leibnitz, _Tr._) 70. It is also to be feared that this doctrine opens the door to pantheism. It was even objected to Clarke that it made God the soul of the world, and although he defended himself from this charge, there still remains an objection which was not proposed to him, and which is a very serious one. If we say that God is space, or that space is a property of God, what hinders our saying that God is the world, or that the world is a property of God? The world is extended; but so is space. If God and space are not contradictory ideas in the same being, why are God and the universe contradictory? Clarke says that bodies are composed of different substances, that they are not one substance; but it is certain that all we know of bodies is that they are extended, and that they cause certain impressions in us. Since, then, extension is not repugnant to God, and much less so the causality of impressions, there can be no reason against saying that what Clarke calls distinct substances, are only the parts, or, if he prefers it, the properties of the infinite substance. Newton went so far as to say that space was the sensorium of God, and even Clarke maintained against Leibnitz that Newton's expression might bear a sound interpretation, as it was intended only as a comparison. But Leibnitz insists so strongly on this charge that it is plain that he had very great objections to this word. 71. Whatever tends to confound God with nature, or to place him in constant communication with it, otherwise than by pure acts of intellect and will, places us on a very slippery declivity, where we can hardly help being precipitated to the bottom, and at this bottom is pantheism, which is but a phasis of atheism.(30) CHAPTER XI. FENELON'S OPINION.