But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no carpenter ever built a ship without pre-existing materials. This I admit; but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or a ship is not to produce it, and that the action of the tailor and the carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as to give them a form. It is, therefore, this form alone that is produced. Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a production of something out of nothing.[152] And thus either you must deny that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that nothing can be produced out of nothing.
Büchner. I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children, or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can entirely die and perish” (p. 15).
Reader. These are empty words.
Büchner. On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).
Reader. Indeed?
Büchner. Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p. 13).
Reader. I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are incapable of giving such a proof.
Büchner. “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for ever” (p. 14).
Reader. Do you endorse these words?
Büchner. Certainly.