“If I saw the motion of a horse followed by the effect you speak of, I should believe in some relation between them; and if I saw it follow the volition of an almighty mind—the same.”
“But the cause would be inadequate to the effect.”
“It could not be so, if it were the cause. For what constitutes the adequacy of which you speak? Clearly only the contact, or immediate proximity of the two occurrences. If any sequence could in fact be more wonderful than another, it should rather seem to be for the consequent to impart grandeur to the precedent—the effect to the cause,—than for the cause to impart grandeur to the effect. But in reality all sequences are equally wonderful. That light should follow the appearance of the sun, is just as wonderful, and no more so, as if it were to follow the appearance of any other body—and did light follow the appearance of a black stone it would excite astonishment simply because we never saw light follow such an appearance before. Accustomed, as we now are, to see light when the sun rises, our wonder would be, if we did not see light when he rose: but were light regularly to attend the appearance of any other body, our wonder at such a sequence would, after a time, cease; and we should then say, as we now say, there is light, because such a body has risen; and imagine then, as we imagine now, that we understand why light is.
“In like manner all existences are equally wonderful. An African lion is in himself nothing more extraordinary than a Grecian horse; although the whole people of Athens will assemble to gaze on the lion, and exclaim, how wonderful! while no man observes the horse.”
“True—but this is the wondering of ignorance.”
“I reply—true again, but so is all wondering. If, indeed, we should consider it in this and in all other cases as simply an emotion of pleasurable surprise, acknowledging the presence of a novel object, the feeling is perfectly rational; but if it imagine any thing more intrinsically marvellous in the novel existence than in the familiar one, it is then clearly the idle—that is, the unreasoned and unreflecting marvelling of ignorance. There is but one real wonder to the thinking mind: it is the existence of all things; that is, the existence of matter. And the only rational ground of this one great wonder is, that the existence of matter is the last link in the chain of cause and effect, at which we can arrive. You imagine yet another link—the existence of a power creating that matter.—My only objections to this additional link, or superadded cause, are, that it is imagined, and that it leaves the wonder as before; unless, indeed, we should say that it has superadded other wonders, since it supposes a power, or rather, an existence possessing a power, of which we never saw an example.”
“How so? Does not even man possess a species of creating power? And do you not suppose, in your inert matter, that very property which others attribute, with more reason it appears to me, to some superior and unknown existence?”
“By no means. No existence, that we know of, possesses creating power, in the sense you suppose. Neither the existence we call a man, nor any of the existences, comprised under the generic names of matter, physical world, nature, &c., possesses the power of calling into being its own constituent elements, nor the constituent elements of any other substance. It can change one substance into another substance, by altering the position of its particles, or intermingling them with others: but it cannot call into being, any more than it can annihilate, those particles themselves. The hand of man causes to approach particles of earth and of water, and by their approximation, produces clay; to which clay it gives a regular form, and, by the application of fire, produces the vessel we call a vase. You may say that the hand of man creates the vase; but it does not create the earth, or the water, or the fire; neither has the admixture of these substances added to, or subtracted from, the sum of their elementary atoms. Observe, therefore, there is no analogy between the power inherent in matter of changing its appearance and qualities, by a simple change in the position of its particles, and that which you attribute to some unseen existence, who, by a simple volition, should have called into being matter itself, with all its wonderful properties. An existence possessing such a power I have never seen; and though this says nothing against the possibility of such an existence, it says every thing against my belief in it. And farther, the power which you attribute to this existence—that of willing every thing out of nothing,—being, not only what I have never seen, but that of which I cannot with any distinctness conceive—it must appear to me the greatest of all improbabilities.”
“Our young friend,” observed Metrodorus, “lately made use of an expression, the error involved in which, seems to be at the root of his difficulty. In speaking of matter,” he continued, turning to Theon, “you employed the epithet inert. What is your meaning? And what matter do you here designate?”
“All matter surely is, in itself, inert.”