Note 82 — FREDERIC THE GREAT’S EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE. (continued 2)

As to the development of feeling and motion, it is absurd to waste time seeking for its mechanism. The nature of motion is as unknown to us as that of matter.82 How can we discover how it is produced unless, like the author of “The History of the Soul,” we resuscitate the old and unintelligible doctrine of substantial forms? I am then quite as content not to know how inert and simple matter becomes active and highly organized, as not to be able to look at the sun without red glasses; and I am as little disquieted concerning the other incomprehensible wonders of nature, the production of feeling and of thought in a being which earlier appeared to our limited eyes as a mere clod of clay.