"A line of spinning jennies, or a regiment of soldiers dressed exactly
alike and going through precisely the same evolutions, gives us no idea
of independent existence: we must see them act out of concert before we
can believe them to have independent wills and properties not impressed
on them from without.
"And this conclusion, which would be strong even if there were only two
individuals precisely alike in _all_ respects and _for ever_, acquires
irresistible force when their number is multiplied beyond the power of
imagination to conceive.
"If we mistake not, then, the discoveries alluded to effectually destroy
the ideas of an _eternal_ self-existent matter by giving to each of its
atoms the essential characters at once of a _manufactured_ article and
of a _subordinate agent_."
In other words, continuing the metaphor of the trained army, we see
millions upon millions of molecules all arranged in regiments, distinct
and separate, and the regiments again made up of companies or
individuals, each obeying his own orders in subordination to, and in
harmony with, the whole: are we not justified in concluding that this
army has not been only called into being by some cause external to
itself; but further, that its constitution has been impressed upon it,
and its equipments and organization directed, by an Infinite
Intelligence?
There is, then, no such thing to be found in Nature as a simple,
structureless "primal matter" which exhibits nothing tending to make
self-causation or aboriginal existence difficult to conceive.
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