Discoursing upon the hypothesis of "a fortuitous concourse of atoms" Dr. Priestley asks, "what reason we have to think that small masses of matter can have power without communication _ab extra_?" Let this question be returned, "have we not reason to think so from attraction the most common property in matter." To get rid of this difficulty he will not allow an atom of matter to be possessed originally of the most simple powers, though he is ready to allow matter to have been eternal. A magnet according to this system must sometime have existed without its magnetic power. He concludes there must be some original existent Being. He shall be allowed many original existent Beings if it pleases him. A man may be an originally existent being, as well as any other. He is superior to other animals in this world. In like manner there may be allowed superior Beings to man (as most probably there are) and yet those superior Beings not have made man. Dr. Priestley will have it, that all bodies are moved by external force. That does not seem quite necessary. Motion may as well be asserted to be originally a property of matter, or its true natural state and rest a deprivation of that property, as that rest should be its natural state. Hume thought so and Hume was no great fool, notwithstanding Dr. Priestley makes so light of him. In fact matter never is, and therefore most probably never was found to be in a state of rest. Nor has Dr. Priestley any reason to suppose gravity, elasticity and electricity to have been imprest on bodies by a superior Being, and not originally inherent in matter, unless to favour his own hypothesis of a Deity. He absolutely says matter could not have had those powers without a communication from a superior and intelligent Being. If matter is perceived in regulated motion, it is added bluntly, that it must be by a mover possessed of a competent intelligence, and that a Being therefore of such power and intelligence _must_ exist. Whoever finds no difficulty in believing the contrary will find as little difficulty in Mr. Hume's hypothesis, that motion might as well as other powers and properties have been originally inherent in matter, or at least have been a necessary result of some matter acting upon another.