SECT.  LXXXIII.  The Epicureans can draw no Consequence from all their Suppositions, although the same should be granted them.

Let us still attend the Epicureans even in their most fabulous suppositions, and carry on the fiction to the last degree of complaisance.  Let us admit motion in the essence of bodies, and suppose, as they do, that motion in a direct line is also essential to all atoms.  Let us bestow upon atoms both a will and an understanding, as poets did on rocks and rivers.  And let us allow them likewise to choose which way they will begin their straight line.  Now, what advantage will these philosophers draw from all I have granted them, contrary to all evidence?  In the first place, all atoms must have been in motion from all eternity; secondly, they must all have had an equal motion; thirdly, they must all have moved in a direct line; fourthly, they must all have moved by an immutable and essential law.

I am still willing to gratify our adversaries, so far as to suppose that those atoms are of different figures, for I will allow them to take for granted what they should be obliged to prove, and for which they have not so much as the shadow of a proof.  One can never grant too much to men who never can draw any consequence from what is granted them; for the more absurdities are allowed them, the sooner they are caught by their own principles.