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.
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