Note 4 — Chapter II

When discussing the hypothesis of Hobbes—that no body can possibly be moved but by a body contiguous and moved—Boyle asks:—

“I demand how there comes to be local motion in the world? For either all the portions of matter that compose the universe have motion belonging to their natures, which the Epicureans affirmed for their atoms, or some parts of matter have this motive power, and some have not, or else none of them have it; but all of them are naturally devoid of motion. If it be granted that motion does naturally belong to all parts of matter, the dispute is at an end, the concession quite overthrowing the hypothesis.

“If Mr. Hobbes should reply that the motion is impressed upon any of the parts of matter by God, he will say that which I most readily grant to be true, but will not serve his turn, if he would speak congruously with his own hypothesis. For I demand whether this Supreme Being that the assertion has recourse to, be a corporeal or an incorporeal substance? If it be the latter, and yet the efficient cause of motion in bodies, then it will not be universally true that whatever body is moved is so by a body contiguous and moved. For, in our supposition, the bodies that God moves, either immediately or by the intervention of any other immaterial being, are not moved by a body contiguous, but by an incorporeal spirit.”—Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion: Boyle, vol. iii. p. 520.