Third Impossibility

It is an established rule that, “If a being has unit y, it can only have issued from a single being, from one hand.” Particularly if it displays a comprehensive life within a perfect order and sensitive balance, it demonstrates self-evidently that it did not issue from numerous hands, which are the cause of conflict and confusion, but that it issued from a single hand that is All-Powerful and All-Wise. Therefore, to attribute such a well-ordered  and  well-balanced  being  which  has  unity  to  the  jumbled  hands  of innumerable,  lifeless,  ignorant,  aggressive,  unconscious,  chaotic,  blind  and  deaf natural  causes,  the  blindness  and  deafness  of  which  increase  with  their  coming together  and  intermingling  among  the   ways   of  numberless  possibilities,  is  as unreasonable as accepting innumerable  impossibilities all at once. If we leave this impossibility aside and assume that material  causes have effects, these effects can only occur through direct contact and touch. However, the contact of natural causes is with the exteriors of living beings. And yet we see that the interiors of such beings, where the hands of material causes can neither reach nor touch, are ten times more delicate,  well-ordered  and  perfect  as  regards  art  than  their  exteriors.  Therefore, although tiny animate creatures, on which the hands and organs of material causes can in no way be situated, indeed they cannot touch the creatures’ exteriors all at once even, are more strange and wonderful as regards their art and creation than the largest creatures,  to   attribute  them  to  those  lifeless,  unknowing,  crude,  distant,  vast, conflicting, deaf and  blind  causes can result  only from a  deafness and  blindness compounded to the number of animate beings.

THE SECOND WAY

This  is  expressed  by  the  phrase  “It  forms  itself.”  It  too  involves  many impossibilities and is absurd and impossible in many aspects. We shall explain three examples of these impossibilities.

First Impossibility

O you obstinate denier! Your egotism has made you so stupid that somehow you decide to  accept a hundred impossibilities all at once. For you yourself are a being and not some  simple substance that is inanimate and unchanging. You resemble an extremely well-ordered  machine that is constantly being renewed and a wonderful palace that is undergoing  continuous change. Particles are working unceasingly in your body. Your body has a  connection and mutual relations with the universe, in particular  with regard  to  sustenance  and  the  perpetuation of the species,  and  the particles that  work  within  it  are  careful  not  to  spoil  that  relationship  nor  to  break  the connection. In this cautious manner they set about their work, as though taking the whole universe into account. Seeing your relationships within it, they take up their positions  accordingly.  And  you  benefit  with  your  external  and  inner  senses  in accordance with the wonderful positions that they take.