The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 2Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 2
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
perhaps, either the wisest or the surest way to become acquainted with
him, to represent him to ourselves, by the imagination of a theologian.
_5thly, "Though the substance, or essence of the self-existent Being, is
in itself absolutely incomprehensible to us, yet many of the essential
attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable, as well as his
existence. Thus, in the first place, the self-existent Being must of
necessity be eternal."_
This proposition differs in nothing from the first, except Dr. Clarke
does not here understand that as the self-existent Being had no
beginning, he can have no end. However this may be, we must ever
inquire, Why this should not be matter? We shall further observe,
that matter not being capable of annihilation, exists necessarily,
consequently will never cease to exist; that the human mind has no means
of conceiving how matter should originate from that which is not itself
matter: is it not obvious, that matter is necessary; that there is
nothing, except its powers, its arrangement, its combinations, which are
contingent or evanescent? The general motion is necessary, but the
given motion is not so; only during the season that the particular
combinations subsist, of which this motion is the consequence, or
the effect: we may be competent to change the direction, to either
accelerate or retard, to suspend or arrest, a particular motion, but the
general motion can never possibly be annihilated. Man, in dying, ceases
to live; that is to say, he no longer either walks, thinks, or acts in
the mode which is peculiar to human organization: but the matter which
composed his body, the matter which formed his mind, does not cease to
move on that account: it simply becomes susceptible of another species
of motion.
_6thly, "The self-existent Being must of necessity be infinite and
omnipresent."_
The word infinite presents only a negative idea--which excludes all
bounds: it is evident that a being who exists necessarily, who is
independent, cannot be limited by any thing which is out of himself;
he must consequently be his own limits; in this sense we may say he is
infinite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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