pon
their own understandings. What can they find in the clinamen that,
with any colour, can account for the liberty of man? This liberty
is not imaginary; for it is not in our power to doubt of our free-
will, any more than it is to doubt of what we are intimately
conscious and certain. I am conscious I am free to continue sitting
when I rise in order to walk. I am sensible of it with so entire
certainty that it is not in my power ever to doubt of it in earnest;
and I should be inconsistent with myself if I dared to say the
contrary. Can the proof of our religion be more evident and
convincing? We cannot doubt of the existence of God unless we doubt
of our own liberty; from whence I infer that no man can seriously
doubt of the being of the Deity, since no man can entertain a
serious doubt about his own liberty. If, on the contrary, it be
frankly acknowledged that men are really free, nothing is more easy
than to demonstrate that the liberty of man's will cannot consist of
any combination of atoms, if one supposes that there was no first
mover, who gave matter arbitrary laws for its motion. Motion must
be essential to bodies, and all the laws of motion must also be as
necessary as the essences of natures are. Therefore, according to
this system, all the motions of bodies must be performed by
constant, necessary, and immutable laws; the motion in a straight
line must be essential to all atoms, that are not made to deviate
from it by the encounter of other atoms; the straight line must
likewise be essential either upwards or downwards, either from right
to left, or left to right, or some other diagonal way, fixed,
precise, and immutable. Besides, it is evident that no atom can
make another atom deviate; for that other atom carries also in its
essence the same invincible and eternal determination to follow the
straight line the same way. From hence it follows that all the
atoms placed at first on different lines must pursue ad infinitum
those parallel lines without ever coming nearer one another; and
that those who are in the same line must follow one another ad
infinitum without ever coming up together, but keeping still the
same distance from one another. The clinamen, as we have already
shown, is manifestly impossible: but, contrary to evident truth,
supposing it to be possible, in such a case it must be affirmed that
the clinamen is no less necessary, immutable, and essential to atoms
than the straight lin