And yet, if there can be two, why cannot there be an infinite
number? For if things can occupy an indivisible lace, they must
themselves be indivisible. If, on the other hand, the points of the
body are identical with the units whose number is the soul, or if
the number of the points in the body is the soul, why have not all
bodies souls? For all bodies contain points or an infinity of points.
Further, how is it possible for these points to be isolated or
separated from their bodies, seeing that lines cannot be resolved into
points?
5
The result is, as we have said, that this view, while on the one
side identical with that of those who maintain that soul is a subtle
kind of body, is on the other entangled in the absurdity peculiar to
Democritus' way of describing the manner in which movement is
originated by soul. For if the soul is present throughout the whole
percipient body, there must, if the soul be a kind of body, be two
bodies in the same place; and for those who call it a number, there
must be many points at one point, or every body must have a soul,
unless the soul be a different sort of number-other, that is, than the
sum of the points existing in a body. Another consequence that follows
is that the animal must be moved by its number precisely in the way
that Democritus explained its being moved by his spherical psychic
atoms. What difference does it make whether we speak of small
spheres or of large units, or, quite simply, of units in movement? One
way or another, the movements of the animal must be due to their
movements.
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