“Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way.”—Atheist.
“But how does a germ come to live?”—Deist.
“Life is organization with feeling.”—Atheist.
“But that you have these two properties from the motion of” dead atoms, or matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if it can not be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, “I know,” while you say to yourself, “I know not?”—Voltaire.
When you venture to affirm that matter acts of itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps. What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!—Voltaire.