Sect. LXXXIV. Atoms Cannot Make Any Compound by the Motion the Epicureans Assign Them
These atoms of so many odd figures—some round, some crooked, others triangular, &c.—are by their essence obliged always to move in a straight line, without ever deviating or bending to the right or to the left; wherefore they never can hook one another, or make together any compound. Put, if you please, the sharpest hooks near other hooks of the like make; yet if every one of them never moves otherwise than in a line perfectly straight, they will eternally move one near another, in parallel lines, without being able to join and hook one another. The two straight lines which are supposed to be parallel, though immediate neighbours, will never cross one another, though carried on ad infinitum; wherefore in all eternity, no hooking, and consequently no compound, can result from that motion of atoms in a direct line.
SECT. LXXXV. The Clinamen, Declination, or Sending of Atoms is a Chimerical Notion that throws the Epicureans into a gross Contradiction.
The Epicureans, not being able to shut their eyes against this glaring difficulty, that strikes at the very foundation of their whole system, have, for a last shift, invented what Lucretius calls clinamen—by which is meant a motion somewhat declining or bending from the straight line, and which gives atoms the occasion to meet and encounter. Thus they turn and wind them at pleasure, according as they fancy best for their purpose. But upon what authority do they suppose this declination of atoms, which comes so pat to bear up their system? If motion in a straight line be essential to bodies, nothing can bend, nor consequently join them, in all eternity; the clinamen destroys the very essence of matter, and those philosophers contradict themselves without blushing. If, on the contrary, the motion in a direct line is not essential to all bodies, why do they so confidently suppose eternal, necessary, and immutable laws for the motion of atoms without recurring to a first mover? And why do they build a whole system of philosophy upon the precarious foundation of a ridiculous fiction? Without the clinamen the straight line can never produce anything, and the Epicurean system falls to the ground; with the clinamen, a fabulous poetical invention, the direct line is violated, and the system falls into derision and ridicule.
Both the straight line and the clinamen are airy suppositions and mere dreams; but these two dreams destroy each other, and this is the upshot of the uncurbed licentiousness some men allow themselves of supposing as eternal truths whatever their imagination suggests them to support a fable; while they refuse to acknowledge the artful and powerful hand that formed and placed all the parts of the universe.
SECT. LXXXVI. Strange Absurdity of the Epicureans, who endeavour to account for the Nature of the Soul by the Declination of Atoms.
To reach the highest degree of amazing extravagance, the Epicureans have had the assurance to explain and account for what we call the soul of man and his free-will, by the clinamen, which is so unaccountable and inexplicable itself. Thus they are reduced to affirm that it is in this motion, wherein atoms are in a kind of equilibrium between a straight line and a line somewhat circular, that human will consists.
Strange philosophy! If atoms move only in a straight line, they are inanimate, and incapable of any degree of knowledge, understanding, or will; but if the very same atoms somewhat deviate from the straight line, they become, on a sudden, animate, thinking, and rational. They are themselves intelligent souls, that know themselves, reflect, deliberate, and are free in their acts and determinations. Was there ever a more absurd metamorphosis? What opinion would men have of religion if, in order to assert it, one should lay down principles and positions so trifling and ridiculous as theirs who dare to attack it in earnest?
SECT. LXXXVII. The Epicureans cast a Mist before their own Eyes by endeavouring to explain the Liberty of Man by the Declination of Atoms.
But let us consider to what degree those philosophers impose upon their own understandings. What can they find in the clinamen that, with any colour, can account for the liberty of man? This liberty is not imaginary; for it is not in our power to doubt of our free-will, any more than it is to doubt of what we are intimately conscious and certain. I am conscious I am free to continue sitting when I rise in order to walk. I am sensible of it with so entire certainty that it is not in my power ever to doubt of it in earnest; and I should be inconsistent with myself if I dared to say the contrary. Can the proof of our religion be more evident and convincing? We cannot doubt of the existence of God unless we doubt of our own liberty; from whence I infer that no man can seriously doubt of the being of the Deity, since no man can entertain a serious doubt about his own liberty. If, on the contrary, it be frankly acknowledged that men are really free, nothing is more easy than to demonstrate that the liberty of man’s will cannot consist of any combination of atoms, if one supposes that there was no first mover, who gave matter arbitrary laws for its motion. Motion must be essential to bodies, and all the laws of motion must also be as necessary as the essences of natures are. Therefore, according to this system, all the motions of bodies must be performed by constant, necessary, and immutable laws; the motion in a straight line must be essential to all atoms, that are not made to deviate from it by the encounter of other atoms; the straight line must likewise be essential either upwards or downwards, either from right to left, or left to right, or some other diagonal way, fixed, precise, and immutable. Besides, it is evident that no atom can make another atom deviate; for that other atom carries also in its essence the same invincible and eternal determination to follow the straight line the same way. From hence it follows that all the atoms placed at first on different lines must pursue ad infinitum those parallel lines without ever coming nearer one another; and that those who are in the same line must follow one another ad infinitum without ever coming up together, but keeping still the same distance from one another. The clinamen, as we have already shown, is manifestly impossible: but, contrary to evident truth, supposing it to be possible, in such a case it must be affirmed that the clinamen is no less necessary, immutable, and essential to atoms than the straight line. Now, will anybody say that an essential and immutable law of the local motion of atoms explains and accounts for the true liberty of man? Is it not manifest that the clinamen can no more account for it than the straight line itself? The clinamen, supposing it to be true, would be as necessary as the perpendicular line, by which a stone falls from the top of a tower into the street. Is that stone free in its fall? However, the will of man, according to the principle of the clinamen, has no more freedom than that stone. Is it possible for man to be so extravagant as to dare to contradict his own conscience about his free-will, lest he should be forced to acknowledge his God and maker? To affirm, on the one hand, that the liberty of man is imaginary, we must silence the voice and stifle the sense of all nature; give ourselves the lie in the grossest manner; deny what we are most intimately conscious and certain of; and, in short, be reduced to believe that we have no eligibility or choice of two courses, or things proposed, about which we fairly deliberate upon any occasion. Nothing does religion more honour than to see men necessitated to fall into such gross and monstrous extravagance as soon as they call in question the truths she teaches. On the other hand, if we own that man is truly free, we acknowledge in him a principle that never can be seriously accounted for, either by the combinations of atoms or the laws of local motion, which must be supposed to be all equally necessary and essential to matter, if one denies a first mover. We must therefore go out of the whole compass of matter, and search far from combined atoms some incorporeal principle to account for free-will, if we admit it fairly. Whatever is matter and an atom, moves only by necessary, immutable, and invincible laws: wherefore liberty cannot be found either in bodies, or in any local motion; and so we must look for it in some incorporeal being. Now whose hand tied and subjected to the organs of this corporeal machine that incorporeal being which must necessarily be in me united to my body? Where is the artificer that ties and unites natures so vastly different? Can any but a power superior both to bodies and spirits keep them together in this union with so absolute a sway? Two crooked atoms, says an Epicurean, hook one another. Now this is false, according to his very system; for I have demonstrated that those two crooked atoms never hook one another, because they never meet. But, however, after having supposed that two crooked atoms unite by hooking one another, the Epicurean must be forced to own that the thinking being, which is free in his operations, and which consequently is not a collection of atoms, ever moved by necessary laws, is incorporeal, and could not by its figure be hooked with the body it animates. Thus which way so ever the Epicurean turns, he overthrows his system with his own hands. But let us not, by any means, endeavour to confound men that err and mistake, since we are men as well as they, and no less subject to error. Let us only pity them, study to light and inform them with patience, edify them, pray for them, and conclude with asserting an evident truth.
SECT. LXXXVIII. We must necessarily acknowledge the Hand of a First Cause in the Universe without inquiring why that first Cause has left Defects in it.
Thus everything in the universe—the heavens, the earth, plants, animals, and, above all, men—bears the stamp of a Deity. Everything shows and proclaims a set design, and a series and concatenation of subordinate causes, over-ruled and directed with order by a superior cause.
It is preposterous and foolish to criticise upon this great work. The defects that happen to be in it proceed either from the free and disorderly will of man, which produces them by its disorder, or from the ever holy and just will of God, who sometimes has a mind to punish impious men, and at other times by the wicked to exercise and improve the good. Nay, it happens oftentimes that what appears a defect to our narrow judgment in a place separate from the work is an ornament with respect to the general design, which we are not able to consider with views sufficiently extended and simple to know the perfection of the whole. Does not daily experience show that we rashly censure certain parts of men’s works for want of being thoroughly acquainted with the whole extent of their designs and schemes? This happens, in particular, every day with respect to the works of painters and architects. If writing characters were of an immense bigness, each character at close view would take up a man’s whole sight, so that it would not be possible for him to see above one at once; and, therefore, he would not be able to read—that is, put different letters together, and discover the sense of all those characters put together. It is the same with the great strokes of Providence in the conduct of the whole world during a long succession of ages. There is nothing but the whole that is intelligible; and the whole is too vast and immense to be seen at close view. Every event is like a particular character that is too large for our narrow organs, and which signifies nothing of itself and separate from the rest. When, at the consummation of ages, we shall see in God—that is, in the true point and centre of perspective—the total of human events, from the first to the last day of the universe, together with their proportions with regard to the designs of God, we shall cry out, “Lord, Thou alone art just and wise!” We cannot rightly judge of the works of men but by examining the whole. Every part ought not to have every perfection, but only such as becomes it according to the order and proportion of the different parts that compose the whole. In a human body, for instance, all the members must not be eyes, for there must be hands, feet, &c. So in the universe, there must be a sun for the day, but there must be also a moon for the night. Nec tibi occurrit perfecta universitas, nisi ubi majora sic præsto sunt, ut minora non desint. This is the judgment we ought to make of every part with respect to the whole. Any other view is narrow and deceitful. But what are the weak and puny designs of men, if compared to that of the creation and government of the universe? “As much as the heavens are above the earth, as much,” says God in the Holy Writ, “are My ways and My thoughts above yours.” Let, therefore, man admire what he understands, and be silent about what he does not comprehend. But, after all, even the real defects of this work are only imperfections which God was pleased to leave in it, to put us in mind that He drew and made it from nothing. There is not anything in the universe but what does and ought equally to bear these two opposite characters: on the one side, the seal or stamp of the artificer upon his work, and, on the other, the mark of its original nothing, into which it may relapse and dwindle every moment. It is an incomprehensible mixture of low and great; of frailty in the matter, and of art in the maker? The hand of God is conspicuous in everything, even in a worm that crawls on earth. Nothingness, on the other hand, appears everywhere, even in the most vast and most sublime genius. Whatever is not God, can have but a stinted perfection; and what has but a stinted perfection, always remains imperfect on the side where the boundary is sensible, and denotes that it might be improved. If the creature wanted nothing, it would be the Creator Himself; for it would have the fulness of perfection, which is the Deity itself. Since it cannot be infinite, it must be limited in perfection, that is, it must be imperfect on one side or other. It may have more or less imperfection, but still it must be imperfect. We must ever be able to point out the very place where it is defective, and to say, upon a critical examination, “This is what it might have had, what it has not.”