LXXIX. It is Falsely supposed that Motion is Essential to
Bodies.
However, let us go a step further, and, out of excessive
complaisance, suppose that all the bodies in Nature are actually in
motion. Does it follow from thence that motion is essential to
every particle of matter? Besides, if all bodies have not an equal
degree of motion; if some move sensibly, and more swiftly than
others; if the same body may move sometimes quicker and sometimes
slower; if a body that moves communicates its motion to the
neighbouring body that was at rest, or in such inferior motion that
it was insensible--it must be confessed that a mode or modification
which sometimes increases, and at other times decreases, in bodies
is not essential to them. What is essential to a being is ever the
same in it. Neither the motion that varies in bodies, and which,
after having increased, slackens and decreases to such a degree as
to appear absolutely extinct and annihilated; nor the motion that is
lost, that is communicated, that passes from one body to another as
a foreign thing--can belong to the essence of bodies. And,
therefore, I may conclude that bodies are perfect in their essence
without ascribing to them any motion. If they have no motion in
their essence, they have it only by accident; and if they have it
only by accident, we must trace up that accident to its true cause.
Bodies must either bestow motion on themselves, or receive it from
some other being.
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