Cause Principle Unity

On magic
parts of another body, but rather, all action comes from quality and form
and ultimately from soul. The soul first changes the dispositions, and then
the dispositions change bodies. Thus, bodies act on distant bodies, on nearby
ones and on their own parts, by means of a certain harmony, joining and
union which comes from form. For, since every body is governed by a soul
or a spirit which connects its parts, and since one soul acts on another
nearby soul in any direction and wherever it is, it follows necessarily that a
soul moves that body, wherever it is, because it is controlled by, and subordinate
to, that soul. Whoever is aware of this indissoluble continuity of
the soul and its necessary connection to a body will possess an important
principle both to control natural things and to understand them better.
From this follows clearly the reason why a void, i.e., a space empty of any
body, does not exist. For no body can leave one place without being
replaced by another. During life, the soul does leave its own body, but it
cannot leave the universal body, nor can it be abandoned by the universal
body, if you prefer to state it that way. For, when it leaves one simple or
complex body, it moves into another simple or complex body, or from one
body left behind, it goes to and enters into another. Thus, it has an indissoluble
connection with universal matter. And since its own nature is to be
a continuous whole everywhere, we realize that it exists together with a
material body everywhere. From this, we conclude that the void does not
exist in the sense of a space with no matter in it, but rather a void is a space
in which different bodies move and succeed each other. It also follows that
the motion of the parts of one body towards the parts of another body is
continuous. Motion occurs through a continuous space which is not interrupted
by any void located between full spaces, unless we wish to say that
a space in which there is no sensible body is a void.
A continuous body is an unobservable body, that is, an airy or ethereal
spirit. It is very active and very powerful and very similar to the soul, and
it is quite different from the dense sluggishness found in observable, composite
substances. The above mentioned powers of unobservable spiritual
bodies are the source of all the powers in observable bodies themselves.
Indications of this are the airy spirit which agitates and embroils all the
seas, and the invincible force of the winds which, even when they are rather
calm and quiet, disturb the earth, break trees and destroy houses. Lucretius
put it well when he said that it is this spiritual body which performs all
actions in observable things. 8 Many philosophers have thought that this
8 Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 235ff.
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