But in this way too several simple substances could once again fuse together into one, and nothing would be lost except merely the plurality of subsistence, since the one substance would contain the degree of reality of all the previous ones together in itself; and perhaps the simple substance, which gives us the appearance of a matter (though of course not through a mechanical or chemical influence on each other, but through one unknown to us, of which these would be only the ap pearance) might produce offspring souls through such a dynamic division of the parent souls, as intensive magnitudes, which would meanwhile replace what had departed from them by a coalition with new material of the same kind.