The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1 — John Shaqi
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
Nevertheless, if the idea of order be applied to Nature, it will be
found to be nothing but a series of action or motion, which he judges
to conspire to one common end. Thus, in a body that moves, order is the
chain of action, the series of motion, proper to constitute it what it
is, and to maintain it in its actual state. Order, relatively to the
whole of Nature, is the concatenation of causes and effects, necessary
to her _active_ existence--to maintaining her constantly together; but,
as it has been proved in the chapter preceding, every individual being
is obliged to concur to this end, in the different ranks they occupy;
from whence it is a necessary deduction, that what is called the ORDER
OF NATURE, can never be more than a certain manner of considering the
necessity of things, to which all, of which man has any knowledge, is
submitted. That which is styled CONFUSION, is only a relative term, used
to designate that series of necessary action, that chain of requisite
motion, by which an individual being is necessarily changed or disturbed
in its mode of existence--by which it is instantaneously obliged to
alter its manner of action; but no one of these actions, no part of
this motion is capable, even for a single instant, of contradicting
or deranging the general order of Nature; from which all beings derive
their existence, their properties, the motion appropriate to each.
What is termed confusion in a being, is nothing more than its passage
into a new class, a new mode of existence; which necessarily carries
with it a new series of action, a new chain of motion, different from
that of which this being found itself susceptible in the preceding
rank it occupied. That which is called order, in Nature, is a mode of
existence, or a disposition of its particles, strictly _necessary_. In
every other assemblage of causes and effects, of worlds, as well as
in that which we inhabit, some sort of arrangement, some kind of order
would necessarily be established. Suppose the most incongruous, the
most heterogeneous substances were put into activity, and assembled by
a concatenation of extraordinary circumstances; they would form amongst
themselves, a complete order, a perfect arrangement. This is the true
notion of a property, which may be defined, an aptitude to constitute a
being, such as it is actually found, such as it is with respect to the
whole of which it makes a part.
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