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| Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It.
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Chapter
XXXVII.—Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral
Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It.
I see now that you are coming back again to that
reason, which has been in the habit of declaring to you nothing in the
way of certainty. For just as you introduce to our notice Matter as
being neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so you allege of it that it is
neither good nor evil; and you say, whilst arguing further on it in the
same strain: “If it were good, seeing that it had ever been so,
it would not require the arrangement of itself by God;6528
if it were naturally evil, it would not have
admitted of a change6529
| 6529 Non accepisset
translationem. | for the better, nor
would God have ever applied to such a nature any attempt at arrangement
of it, for His labour would have been in vain.” Such are your
words, which it would have been well if you had remembered in other
passages also, so as to have avoided any contradiction of them. As,
however, we have already treated to some extent of this ambiguity of
good and evil touching Matter, I will now reply to the only proposition
and argument of yours which we have before us. I shall not stop to
repeat my opinion, that it was your bounden duty to have said for
certain that Matter was either good or bad, or in some third condition;
but (I must observe) that you have not here even kept to the statement
which you chose to make before. Indeed, you retract what you
declared—that Matter is neither good nor evil; because you imply
that it is evil when you say, “If it were good, it would not
require to be set in order by God;” so again, when you add,
“If it were naturally evil, it would not admit of any change for
the better,” you seem to intimate6530
that it is good. And so you attribute to it a close relation6531
to good and evil, although you declared it
neither good nor evil. With a view, however, to refute the argument
whereby you thought you were going to clinch your proposition, I here
contend: If Matter had always been good, why should it not have
still wanted a change for the better? Does that which is good
never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change
its good for a better? And in like manner, if Matter had been by
nature evil, why might it not have been changed by God as the more
powerful Being, as able to convert the nature of stones into children
of Abraham?6532
Surely by such
means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him
below6533
it, since you affirm that6534
| 6534 This is the force of
the subjunctive verb. | the nature of Matter could not
possibly be brought under
control by Him, and trained to something better. But although you are
here disinclined to allow that Matter is by nature evil, yet in another
passage you will deny having made such an admission.6535
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