the Greek and Roman atomists, including Epicurus and Lucretius, were better off in one respect than Descartes. For they thought, as he did not, that the spirit itself must be understood in mechanical terms. The mind or spirit, they held, was composed of particularly fine, small, and exceedingly mobile mechanical particles, so there is no reason in principle why these should not influence the directions and velocities of the larger particles of the body.
An intermadiate stage of thought still in line with the vitalist school of tgought and insisting on unique qualities of life vs nonliving matter but not yet approaching our modern notiin of uniform compkosition of all objects
