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
Infinite, according to Dennis, means "boundless, unlimited." Doctor
Clarke thus describes it:--he says, "The self-existent being must be a
most simple, unchangeable incorruptible being; without parts, figure,
motion, divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter.
For all these things do plainly and necessarily imply finiteness in
their very notion, and are utterly inconsistent with complete infinity."
Ingenuously, is it possible for man to form any true notion of such a
quality? The theologians themselves acknowledge he cannot. Further, the
Doctor allows, "That as to the particular manner of his being infinite,
or every where present, in opposition to the manner of created things
being present in such or such finite places, this is as impossible for
our finite understandings to comprehend or explain, as it is for us to
form an adequate idea of infinity." What is this, then, but that which
no man can explain or comprehend? If it cannot be comprehended, it
cannot be detailed; if it cannot be detailed, it is precisely "that of
which nothing can with truth be affirmed;" and this is Dr. Clarke's own
explanation of nothing. Indeed, is not the human mind obliged by its
very nature to join limited quantities to other quantities, which it can
only conceive as limited, in order to form to itself a sort of confused
idea of something beyond its own grasp, without ever reaching the point
of infinity, which eludes every attempt at definition? Then it would
appear that it is an abstraction, a mere negation of limitation.
Our learned adversary seems to think it strange that the existence of
incorporeal, immaterial substances, the essence of which we are not
able to comprehend, should not be generally accredited. To enforce
this belief, he says, "There is not so mean and contemptible a plant
or animal, that does not confound the most enlarged understanding, upon
earth: nay, even the simplest and plainest of all inanimate beings
have their essence or substance hidden from us in the deepest and most
impenetrable obscurity."
We shall reply to him,
_First_, That the idea of an immaterial substance; or being without
extent, is only an absence of ideas, a negation of extent, as we have
already shewn; that when we are told a being is not matter, they speak
to us of that which is not, and do not teach us that which is; because
by insisting that a being is such, that it cannot act upon any of our
senses, they, in fact, inform us that we have no means of assuring
ourselves whether such being exists or not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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