From nothing nought can spring, to nothing nought return.
Nought but a body can a body touch.
POSIDONIUS.—Should I grant you these principles, and even your atoms and your vacuum, you can no more persuade me that the universe put itself into the admirable order in which we now behold it, than if you were to tell the Romans that the armillary sphere composed by Posidonius made itself.
LUCRETIUS.—But who then could make the world?
POSIDONIUS.—An intelligent Being, much more superior to the world and to me than I am to the brass of which I made my sphere.
LUCRETIUS.—How can you, who admit nothing but what is evident, acknowledge a principle of which you have not the least idea?
POSIDONIUS.—In the same manner as, before I knew you, I judged that your book was the work of a man of genius.
LUCRETIUS.—You allow that nature is eternal, and exists because it does exist. Now if it exists by its own power, why may it not, by the same power, have formed suns, and worlds, and plants, and animals, and men?
POSIDONIUS.—All the ancient philosophers have supposed matter to be eternal, but have never proved it to be really so; and even allowing it to be eternal, it would by no means follow that it could form works in which there are so many striking proofs of wisdom and design. Suppose this stone to be eternal if you will, you can never persuade me that it could have composed the “Iliad” of Homer.
LUCRETIUS.—No: a stone could never have composed the “Iliad,” any more than it could have produced a horse: but matter organized in process of time, and become bones, flesh, and blood, will produce a horse; and organized more finely, will produce the “Iliad.”