III. BOOK salve the origin of things by a concourse of atoms, is yet as precarious, and without reason, as any other Fi. Bon supposition of theirs whatsoever. Tully chargeth this et Mal. 1. i-motion of declination with two great faults; futility Cicero de and inefficacy, quæ cum res tota ficta sit pueriliter, tum ne efficit quidem quod vult. It is a childish fancy, and to no purpose: For, first, it is asserted without any reason at all given for it, which is unworthy a philosopher; neither is it to any purpose: for if all atoms, saith he, decline in their motion, then none of them will stick together: if some decline, and others do not, this is as precarious as any thing can be imagined, to assign a diversity of motion in indivisible particles, which yet have all the same velocity of motion; and, as Tully saith, Hoc erit quasi provincias atomis dare, quæ recte, quæ oblique ferantur, as though Epicurus were the general at this rendezvous of atoms, who stands ready to appoint every one his Plutarch. task and motion. This, Plutarch tells us, was the procreat. e great charge against Epicurus, ὡς ἀναίτιον ἐπεισάγοντι κίTurnebus νησιν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, because he introduced such a moin Ciceron. tion of declination out of nothing, upon no pretence of reason. And Turnebus tells us, that the ground why they desired so small a declination, was, because they were conscious to themselves that it was founded upon no ground of reason; Et Epicurei sibi conscii culpa, timide eam ponebant, et minimam sibi postulabant. To which purpose Turnebus cites those verses of Lucretius: de Anim. Timæo. de Fato. Lucret. ii. 243. Quare etiam atque etiam paullum clinare necesse 'st Sed nihil omnino recta regione viaï Declinare, quis est, qui possit cernere, sese? ni СНАР. But this argument of Lucretius will hold, if at all, further than this little declination, (for it is no more they desire than as little as may be imagined, quo hil possit fieri minus, as Tully expresseth it;) but if they may decline a little, why not a great deal more? Nay, it is impossible to conceive, but a little oblique motion at first will in an infinite space grow to be very oblique; for there is nothing to hinder the motion which way it bends: now if there be never so little motion of declination, the atom will be inclined that way; and what then should hinder, but that the obliquity in a motion through a great space should at last come to be very great; there being no centre at all to guide the motion towards, and the gravity not hindering this little declination? Therefore Tully asks that question, Cur declinet uno minimo, non declinet Cicero de duobus aut tribus? Why only it declines one minim, and not two or three? For, saith he, it is no impulsion from any other atom which makes it decline that one minim; neither is there any impediment in the space to hinder it from declining more; so that, as he well saith, optare hoc quidem est, non disputare, this is to beg hypotheses, and not to prove them, which is the thing we have proved Epicurus to do. Which was the first thing premised, viz. that this hypothesis of Epicurus was very precarious, and is built on no foundation of reason. Fato. 2. It is unsatisfactory and insufficient, as well as XVII. precarious; for should we grant his two main principles, atoms, and his infinite empty space, yet we deny that his atoms, with all their occursions, would ever produce those things which are in the universe. run through the noted phenomena of the universe, and To BOOK to shew how insufficient an account the Epicureans are able to give of them from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, is a task too large to be here undertaken. There are only three things which I shall rather suggest, than insist upon, to see what miserable shifts the Epicureans are driven to for the salving of them, and shall then leave it with the reader to judge, what unmeasurable confidence it is in any to reject the creation of the world for the sake of the Epicurean hypothesis; and whether it be not the height of credulity, as well as infidelity, to believe the world ever to have been made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 1. The great variety of appearances in nature, which are attributed to particles of the same nature, only with the alteration of size, shape, and motion. That some things in the world should have no other reason given of them, may not only be tolerable but rational; as in the objects and operations on the organs of sense, those affections which are mistaken for real qualities, &c. But that all those effects which are seen in nature should have no other cause but the different configuration and motion of atoms, is the height of folly as well as impiety. To imagine that the particles of matter, as they are in men, should be capable of sensation, memory, intellection, volition, &c. merely because of a different shape, size, and motion from what they have in a piece of wood, is a riddle that requires a new configuration of atoms in us to make us understand. May it not be hoped, that at least one time or other, by this casual concourse of atoms, the particles may light to be of such a nature in stones, as to make them fly; in plants, to make them all sensitive; and in beasts, to make them reason and discourse? What may hinder such a configuration or motion of particles, if all these effects are to be imputed II. to no higher principle? We see in other bodies what CHAP. different appearances are caused by a sudden alteration of the particles of the matter of which they are compounded; why may it not fall out so in the things mentioned? Neither can this be unreasonable to demand. 1. Because the motion of these particles of matter is casual still according to them: and who knows what chance may do? for the seminal principles themselves are, I suppose, according to them, of the same uniform matter with the rest of the world, and so are liable to different motion and configuration. 2. Because all particles of matter are supposed to be in continual motion, because of that disseminated vacuity which is presumed to be in the world, and because a coacervate vacuity is not only asserted as possible, but as probably existent: I assume only then, (that which is insisted on as probable, viz.) that that space which lies between our atmosphere and the stars is empty of any other thing but only the rays of the stars which pass through it; I then supposing it a vacuity, whether would not the particles of those bodies, which lie contiguous to that space, presently dislodge from the bodies wherein they are, and begin a new rendezvous of atoms there? for all atoms are supposed to be in perpetual motion; and the cause assigned why in solid bodies they do not fly away, is because of the repercussion of other atoms, that when they once begin to stir, they receive such knocks as make them quiet in their places. Now this cannot hold in the bodies contiguous to this space; for both those bodies are more fluid, and so there is no such knocking of particles to keep them at rest: but which is more, those which are contiguous have nothing at all to hinder them from motion, and so those particles will necessarily remove into that empty space where there is no impediment of III. BOOK their motion, and so the next atoms to those must remove, because that space wherein the other were is made empty by their removal; and so the next, and so on, till not only the air, but the whole mass of the earth will, on supposition of such a vacuity, be dissolved into its first particles, which will all mutiny in the several bodies wherein they are, and never rest till they come to that empty space, where they may again rendezvous together. So dangerous is the news of liberty, or of an empty space, to these democratical particles of the universe! Neither can I see how a disseminated vacuity can salve the difficulty; for those particles of the most solid bodies being in continual motion, and the ground of their union being repercussion, it thence follows, that, towards that part where the disseminated vacuum is, the particles meeting with no such strokes may fairly take their leaves of the bodies they are in, and so one succeed in the place of another, till the configuration of the whole be altered; and consequently different appearances and effects may be caused in the same bodies, though it results from seminal principles. So that, according to the atomical principles, no rational account can be given of those effects which are seen in nature. This Dionysius in Eusebius urgeth against the atomists, that from the 1. xiv. c.25. same principles, without evident reason given for it, they make of the same uniform matter some things conspicuous to sense, others not; some short-lived, others extremely long-lived. Τίνα δὲ τρόπον μιᾶς οὔσης καὶ τῆς αὐτῆς ἁπασῶν οὐσίας, καὶ τῆς αὐτῆς ἀφθάρτου φύσεως, πλὴν τῶν μεγέθων, ὥς φασι, καὶ τῶν σχημάτων, τὰ μέν ἐστι θεῖα καὶ ἀκήρατα καὶ αἰώνια, ὡς αὐτοὶ φήσαιεν αν, σώματα, ἢ μας κραίωνα γε κατὰ τὸν οὕτως ὀνομάσαντα, φαινόμενά τε καὶ ἀφανῆ; What ground can there be assigned of so vast a difference between things, if they all be of the same na Euseb. Præp. Ev. ed. Par. |