There is therefore a potent and intelligent being who has always acted;
and if this being had never acted, of what use would his existence have
been to him?
All things are therefore eternal emanations of this prime author.
But how imagine that stone and mud are emanations of the eternal Being,
potent and intelligent?
Of two things one, either the matter of this stone and this mud exist
necessarily by themselves, or they exist necessarily through this prime
author; there is no middle course.
Thus, therefore, there are only two choices to make, admit either matter
eternal by itself, or matter issuing eternally from the potent,
intelligent eternal Being.
But, either subsisting by its own nature, or emanated from the producing
Being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists, and there is no
reason why it should not have existed before.
If matter is eternally necessary, it is therefore impossible, it is
therefore contradictory that it does not exist; but what man can affirm
that it is impossible, that it is contradictory that this pebble and
this fly have not existence? One is, nevertheless, forced to suppress
this difficulty which astonishes the imagination more than it
contradicts the principles of reasoning.
In fact, as soon as you have imagined that everything has emanated from
the supreme and intelligent Being, that nothing has emanated from the
Being without reason, that this Being existing always, must always have
acted, that consequently all things must have eternally issued from the
womb of His existence, you should no more refuse to believe in the
matter of which this pebble and this fly, an eternal production, are
formed, than you refuse to imagine light as an eternal emanation from
the omnipotent Being.
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