consequently join them, in all eternity; the clinamen destroys the very essence of matter, and those philosophers contradict themselves without blushing.  If, on the contrary, the motion in a direct line is not essential to all bodies, why do they so confidently suppose eternal, necessary, and immutable laws for the motion of atoms without recurring to a first mover?  And why do they build a whole system of philosophy upon the precarious foundation of a ridiculous fiction?  Without the clinamen the straight line can never produce anything, and the Epicurean system falls to the ground; with the clinamen, a fabulous poetical invention, the direct line is violated, and the system falls into derision and ridicule.

Both the straight line and the clinamen are airy suppositions and mere dreams; but these two dreams destroy each other, and this is the upshot of the uncurbed licentiousness some men allow themselves of supposing as eternal truths whatever their imagination suggests them to support a fable; while they refuse to acknowledge the artful and powerful hand that formed and placed all the parts of the universe.

Sect.  LXXXVI.  Strange Absurdity of the Epicureans, who endeavour to account for the Nature of the Soul by the Declination of Atoms.

To reach the highest degree of amazing extravagance, the Epicureans have had the assurance to explain and account for what we call the soul of man and his free-will, by the clinamen, which is so unaccountable and inexplicable itself.  Thus they are reduced to affirm that it is in this motion, wherein atoms are in a kind of equilibrium between a straight line and a line somewhat circular, that human will consists.

Strange philosophy!  If atoms move only in a straight line, they are inanimate, and incapable of any degree of knowledge, understanding, or will; but if the very same atoms somewhat deviate from the straight line, they become, on a sudden, animate, thinking, and rational.  They are themselves intelligent souls, that know themselves, reflect, deliberate, and are free in their acts and determinations.  Was there ever a more absurd metamorphosis?  What opinion would men have of religion if, in order to assert it, one should lay down principles and positions so trifling and ridiculous as theirs who dare to attack it in earnest?

Sect.  LXXXVII.  The Epicureans cast a Mist before their own Eyes by endeavouring to explain the Liberty of Man by the Declination of Atoms.

But let us consider to what degree those philosophers impose upon 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