NATURE ACTS ON MATTER NOT MECHANICALLY BUT BY ITS POTENCY.
2. Evidently nature possesses neither hands, nor feet, nor any natural or artificial instrument. For production its only need is a matter on which to work, and which it forms. The works of nature exclude all ideas of mechanical operation; not by any impelling force, nor by using levers nor machines does it produce varied colors, nor draw the outlines of objects. Even the workmen who form wax figures, to whose work the operations of nature are often compared, cannot endue objects with colors without borrowing them from elsewhere. Besides, we must observe that these workmen contain a power which remains immutable, and by the sole means of which they produce their works with their hands. Likewise, nature contains a power which remains immovable as a whole; it has no need of some parts that would remain immovable, and others that move. It is matter alone that undergoes movement, for the forming power is in no way moved. Were the forming power moved, it would no longer be the first motor[179]; the first motor would no longer be nature, but whatever might, in its totality, be immovable.