Abstract: In this paper, I consider the significant 1706–1708 correspondence between Samuel Clarke, a Newtonian and substance dualist, and Anthony Collins, a freethinking friend of Locke and materialist with respect to the created world. This debate is significant for a number of reasons, one of which is that it provides the occasion for an extended early exposition of, and attack on, the view, put forward by Collins, that consciousness might emerge from a system of appropriately-organized matter. It is the purpose of this project to focus on how Clarke attempts to resist Collins's argument for emergentism and, in so doing, defend his own view that consciousness belongs to an indivisible soul. I first discuss the intellectual background of the correspondence, in which the 'thinking matter' debate ignited by Locke heavily features. Next, I develop Clarke's claim that the mind is indivisible, which I contend comes in the form of an Achilles argument, moving from our experienced unity of consciousness to the claim that only an indivisible mind could have such an experience. Then, I analyze Collins's version of the emergentist argument, as it is refined over the course of the correspondence. Having put these pieces in place, I turn to consider just how Clarke proposes to escape the force of this argument. After rejecting two suggestions put forward in the literature by Rozemond and Uzgalis, I argue that Clarke's strongest response comes in his 'Fourth Defence' (at The Works III, 890-891), in which he denies that anything can have a purely potential capacity that is dependent on relational or extrinsic realizations. Finally, I consider an objection to Clarke's view that consciousness cannot arise in a material system due to that system being divisible, which presses on the fact that, for Clarke, the mind is extended and, thus, seems to be divisible as well, at least by God. I argue that Clarke can escape the force of this worry by appealing to holenmerianism—the view that the mind exists 'whole in the whole and whole in the part'—such that it cannot be divided. Moreover, I contend that this holenmerian appeal will help to further sustain Clarke's argument that only an indivisible mind could experience a unified consciousness, by pointing to features of consciousness that seem to require that the mind exist in a holenmerian manner. With that, I briefly conclude, having shown how Clarke claims to overcome an early emergentist view of consciousness.