Who could imagine, replied DEMEA, that cleanthes, the calm philosophical cleanthes, would attempt to refute his antagonists by affixing a nickname to them; and, like the common bigots and inquisitors of the age, have recourse to invective and declamation, instead of reasoning?  Or does he not perceive, that these topics are easily retorted, and that Anthropomorphite is an appellation as invidious, and implies as dangerous consequences, as the epithet of Mystic, with which he has honoured us?  In reality, cleanthes, consider what it is you assert when you represent the Deity as similar to a human mind and understanding.  What is the soul of man?  A composition of various faculties, passions, sentiments, ideas; united, indeed, into one self or person, but still distinct from each other.  When it reasons, the ideas, which are the parts of its discourse, arrange themselves in a certain form or order; which is not preserved entire for a moment, but immediately gives place to another arrangement.  New opinions, new passions, new affections, new feelings arise, which continually diversify the mental scene, and produce in it the greatest variety and most rapid succession imaginable.  How is this compatible with that perfect immutability and simplicity which all true Theists ascribe to the Deity?  By the same act, say they, he sees past, present, and future:  His love and hatred, his mercy and justice, are one individual operation:  He is entire in every point of space; and complete in every instant of duration.  No succession, no change, no acquisition, no diminution.  What he is implies not in it any shadow of distinction or diversity.  And what he is this moment he ever has been, and ever will be, without any new judgement, sentiment, or operation.  He stands fixed in one simple, perfect state:  nor can you ever say, with any propriety, that this act of his is different from that other; or that this judgement or idea has been lately formed, and will give place, by succession, to any different judgement or idea.

I can readily allow, said cleanthes, that those who maintain the perfect simplicity of the Supreme Being, to the extent in which you have explained it, are complete Mystics, and chargeable with all the consequences which I have drawn from their opinion.  They are, in a word, Atheists, without knowing it.  For though it be allowed, that the Deity possesses attributes of which we have no comprehension, yet ought we never to ascribe to him any attributes which are absolutely incompatible with that intelligent nature essential to him.  A mind, whose acts and sentiments and ideas are not distinct and successive; one, that is wholly simple, and totally immutable, is a mind which has no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or, in a word, is no mind at all.  It is an abuse of terms to give it that appellation; and we may as well speak of limited extension without figure, or of number without composition.