small determinate quantity of matter, neither more nor less, interspersed in the immense vacuities of space, no reason can be given. Nor can there be anything in nature, which could have determined a thing so indifferent in itself as is the measure of that quantity, but only the will of an intelligent and free agent. To suppose matter or any other substance necessarily existing in a finite determinate quantity; in an inch-cube, for instance, or in any certain number of cube-inches, and no more, is exactly the same absurdity, as supposing it to exist necessarily, and yet for a finite duration only; which every one sees to be a plain contradiction. The argument is likewise the same in the question about the original of motion. ^ Motion cannot be necessarily existing; because, it being evident that all determinations of motion are equally possible in themselves, the original determination of the motion of any particular body this way rather than the contrary way, could not be necessary in itself, but was either caused by the will of an intelligent and free agent, or else was an effect produced and determined without any cause at all, which is an express contradiction; as I have shown in my Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, [p. 14, Edit. 4th and 5th;] [p. 12, Edit. 6th, 7th, and 8th.]
To the second head of argument I answer,—space is a property [or mode] of the self-existent substance, but not of any other substances. All other substances are in space, and are penetrated by it; but the self-existent substance is not in space, nor penetrated by it, but is itself (if I may so speak) the substratum of space, the ground of the existence of space and duration itself. Which [space and duration] being evidently necessary, and yet themselves not sub- stances, but properties or modes, show evidently that the substance, without which these modes could not subsist, is itself much more (if that were possible) necessary. And as space and duration are needful (i.e., sine quâ non) to the existence of everything else; so, consequently, is the
