no motion is essential to any body. Wherefore
all those laws which are supposed to be eternal and immutable are,
on the contrary, arbitrary, accidental, and made without cogent
necessity; for there is none of them that can be accounted for by
the essence of bodies.

If there were any law of motion essential to bodies, it would
undoubtedly be that by which bodies of less bulk and less solid are
moved by such as have more bulk and solidity. And yet we have seen
that that very law is not to be accounted for by the essence of
bodies. There is another which might also seem very natural--that,
I mean, by which bodies ever move rather in a direct than a crooked
line, unless their motion be otherwise determined by the meeting of
other bodies. But even this rule has no foundation in the essence
of matter. Motion is so very accidental, and super-added to the
nature of bodies, that we do not find in this nature of bodies any
primitive or immutable law by which they ought to move at all, much
less to move according to certain rules. In the same manner as
bodies might have existed, and yet have never either been in motion
or communicated motion one to another, so they might never have
moved but in a circular line, and this motion might have been as
natural to them as the motion in a direct line. Now, who is it that
pitched upon either of these two laws equally possible? What is not
determined by the essence of bodies can have been determined by no
other but Him who gave bodies the motion they had not in their own
essence. Besides, this motion in a direct line might have been
upwards or downwards, from right to left, or from left to right, or
in a diagonal line. Now, who is it that determined which way the
straight line should go?

SECT. LXXXIII. The Epicureans can draw no Consequence from all
their Suppositions, although the same should be granted them.

Let us still attend the Epicureans even in their most fabulous
suppositions, and carry on the fiction to the last degree of
complaisance. Let us admit motion in the essence of bodies, and
suppose, as they do, that motion in a direct line is also essential
to all atoms. Let us bestow upon atoms both a will and an
understanding, as poets did on rocks and rivers. And let us allow
them likewise to choose which way they will begin their straight
line. Now, what advantage will these philosophers draw from all I
have granted them, contrary to all evidence? In the