But let us
suppose motion eternal too: yet matter, incogitative matter and
motion, whatever changes it might produce of figure and bulk, could
never produce thought: knowledge will still be as far beyond the power
of motion and matter to produce, as matter is beyond the power of
nothing or nonentity to produce. And I appeal to every one's own
thoughts, whether he cannot as easily conceive matter produced by
nothing, as thought to be produced by pure matter, when, before, there
was no such thing as thought or an intelligent being existing?
Divide matter into as many parts as you will, (which we are apt to
imagine a sort of spiritualizing, or making a thinking thing of it,)
vary the figure and motion of it as much as you please- a globe, cube,
cone, prism, cylinder, &c., whose diameters are but 100,000th part
of a gry, will operate no otherwise upon other bodies of
proportionable bulk, than those of an inch or foot diameter; and you
may as rationally expect to produce sense, thought, and knowledge,
by putting together, in a certain figure and motion, gross particles
of matter, as by those that are the very minutest that do anywhere
exist. They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the
greater do; and that is all they can do. So that, if we will suppose
nothing first or eternal, matter can never begin to be: if we
suppose bare matter without motion, eternal, motion can never begin to
be: if we suppose only matter and motion first, or eternal, thought
can never begin to be.
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