It is evident they do not bestow it on
themselves, for no being can give what it has not in itself. And we
are sensible that a body at rest ever remains motionless, unless
some neighbouring body happens to shake it. It is certain,
therefore, that no body moves by itself, and is only moved by some
other body that communicates its motion to it. But how comes it to
pass that a body can move another? What is the reason that a ball
which a man causes to roll on a smooth table (billiards, for the
purpose) cannot touch another without moving it? Why was it not
possible that motion should not ever communicate itself from one
body to another? In such a case a ball in motion would stop near
another at their meeting, and yet never shake it.
SECT. LXXX. The Rules of Motion, which the Epicureans suppose do
not render it essential to Bodies.
I may be answered that, according to the rules of motion among
bodies, one ought to shake or move another. But where are those
laws of motion written and recorded? Who both made them and
rendered them so inviolable? They do not belong to the essence of
bodies, for we can conceive bodies at rest; and we even conceive
bodies that would not communicate their motion to others unless
these rules, with whose original we are unacquainted, subjected them
to it. Whence comes this, as it were, arbitrary government of
motion over all bodies? Whence proceed laws so ingenious, so just,
so well adapted one to the other, that the least alteration of or
deviation from which would, on a sudden, overturn and destroy all
the excellent order we admire in the universe? A body being
entirely distinct from another, is in its nature absolutely
independent from it in all respects.
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