All bodies continue in a state of rest, till they are put into motion by some external force impressed on them. Motion is the removal of a body from one place to another, or a continual change of place.[48] Any force acting on a body to move it, is called a power. The momentum, or quantity of motion, is in proportion to the force impressed. The heavier any body is, the greater is the power required to move it.
There are but three possible ways of accounting for motion:—either by supposing that there has been an infinite succession of impulses communicated from one body to another from eternity, without any active principle either in matter or without it: or, that there is an active principle in matter that renders it self-active, and motion essential to it: or, else, that there is a Being distinct from matter, and is the cause of its motion.
An infinite succession of impulses, without an active or moving principle, will never give birth to motion, because this would be to produce an effect without the assistance of a cause. This absurdity was asserted by Spinosa; yet when urged by his friends to explain how matter could ever come into motion, if motion was neither essential to matter, nor proceeded from any external cause, he always avoided giving a direct answer. This conduct makes it reasonable to believe, that he himself would have given up his account of motion, if he could have saved his atheistical scheme and his reputation.
That motion is essential to all matter, and action as much an attribute of matter, as extension or solidity; and, consequently, every atom of matter is necessarily self-moving, or active from the necessity of its own nature, is asserted by Toland. Though he thought fit to reject the hypothesis of Spinosa as indefensible, yet he believed in the atheistic notion, that motion is essential to matter, and thinks it will be sufficient without troubling the Supreme Being. The reason which has always determined mankind to look out for a cause of motion extrinsical to matter, was this: though they could easily conceive it capable of being moved and divided; yet the conceiving of it to be undivided, and unmoved, was a more simple notion of matter, than the conceiving it divided and moved. This being first in order of nature, and an adequate conception of it too, they thought it necessary to inquire, how it came out of this state, and by what causes motion, from whence this diversity in matter arose, could come into the world?
Descartes, though he allowed the infinity of matter, as well as Toland, was yet sensible that even this would not alter the nature of matter, nor the idea that every person had of its inactivity, and therefore could see no way of altering its primitive idea, and reconciling it with the motion of matter, but by introducing an infinite Being, who had sufficient power to rouse matter out of that sleepy state in which its original idea had represented it.[49]
That such a circumstance exists, and what it is, a French author very clearly states. He says, The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.
The natural state of matter, as to place, is a state of rest. Motion, or change of place, is the effect of an external cause acting upon matter. As to that faculty of matter called gravitation, it is the influence which two or more bodies have reciprocally on each other to unite and be at rest. Every thing which has hitherto been discovered with respect to the motion of the planets in the system, relates only to the laws by which motion acts, and not to the cause of motion. Gravitation, so far from being the cause of motion to the planets that compose the solar system, would be the destruction of the solar system, were revolutionary motion to cease; for as the action of spinning upholds a top, the revolutionary motion upholds the planets in their orbits, and prevents them from gravitating and forming one mass with the sun.
“By ceaseless action all that is subsists;
Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel
That nature rides upon, maintains her health,