The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

row of blind men, of which the last laid his hand upon the shoulder of the man next before him, he on the shoulder of the next before him, and so on till the foremost grew to be quite out of sight; and somebody asking what guide this string of blind men had at the head of them, it should be answered that they had no guide, nor any head, but one held by another, and so went on, ad infinitum, would any rational creature accept this for a just answer? Is it not to say that infinite blindness (or blindness, if it be infinite) supplies the place of sight, or of a guide? ↩

So Aristotle says of the First Mover, Οὐκ ἐνδέχεται ἄλλως ἔχειν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐστι, κ.τ.λ.: “It is impossible for it to be otherwise; it is necessary.” (Metaphysics.) And after him the Arabic philosophers, Maimonides, Albo, among others teach all that God exists necessarily: מן השקר העדרו: “To suppose him not to be implies a falsity;” or “He cannot be supposed not to be.” This seems to be the import of that name by which God calls himself, in Moses’s history: אהיה אשר אהיה, “I am that I am;” or in one word, אהיה, “I will be;” which, in the mouth of one who speaks of Him in the third person, is יחיה or יחוה, “He will be.” So Philo explains it: Εἶναι πέφυκα: “Existence belongs to his very nature.” So Abravanel: אני אהיה בעבור שאהיה כי אין מציאותי תלוי בזולתי אלא בעצמי: “I am, because I am; for my existence does not depend upon anything without me, but is from myself,” adding moreover that it showed God to be, not like other beings, איפשרי המציאות: “a being that might or might not have existed,” but מחוייב המציאות מצד עצמו: “whose existence flows necessarily from himself,” a Necessary being. And so Levi ben Gershom, יורה זה השם שהוא הנמצא אשר ימצא מעצמותו: “The very name (of God) shows this, for it signifies a being that exists of itself, or from its own nature.” I omit others who write after the same manner. There have been even Heathens who seemed to think that some such name as this belonged to the Deity, and for the same reason. For as אהוה: Eheveh, “I shall be,” and thence יהוה: Jehovah, “He shall be,” are used above, so Plutarch says that in addressing to Him the second person Εἶ (תהיה or תהוה⁠—Tehejeh or Teheveh) “Thou shalt be,” is ἀυτοτελὴς τοῦ Θεοῦ προσαγόρευσις καὶ προσφώνησις, “the most complete appellation or title of God,” and that by this compellation we give him ἀληθῆ καὶ ἀψευδῆ καὶ μόνην μόνῳ προσήκουσαν τὴν τοῦ εἶναι προσαγόρευσιν. Ἡμῖν μὲν γὰρ ὄντως τοῦ εἶναι μέτεστιν οὐδέν: “the true, the certain, and the only title that is peculiar to the self-existent being; for self-existence does not belong to any of us.” (Plutarch, Moralia.) It is τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ ἀγενητὸν καὶ ἄφθαρτον: “that which is eternal, which never had any beginning, and which is incorruptible,” that is, ὄντως ὄν, “the being that truly exists.” ↩

Something must be מחוייב המציאות, “necessarily existent,” otherwise לא יהיה דבר נמצא כלל, “there could be no beings at all;” everything cannot be אפשר מציאות: “precarious or such as might not have existed, etc.” (The Guide for the Perplexed et. al.) ↩

This needs no demonstration. But there is a very old one in Emunoth ve-Deoth and after in Sefer Hobot Ha-Lebabot: עושה את עצמו אל ימלט מאחד משני דברים שעשה את עצמו קודם הויתו או אחר הויתו ושניהם אי אפשר וכו׳: “He, who makes himself, must be said to do one of these two things, viz. either to have made himself before he existed, or else to have made himself after he existed, either of which is impossible.” ↩

What relation or analogy there is between time (a flux of moments) and eternal (unchangeable) existence, how any being should not be older now than he was 5,000 years ago, etc., are speculations attended with insuperable difficulties. Nor are they at all cleared by that of Timæus in Plato: Ὡς ποτ᾿ ἀἴδιον παράδειγμα τόν ἰδανικὸν κόσμον ὅδε ὠρανός ἐγεννάθη, οὕτως ὡς πρός παράδειγμα τόν αἰῶνα ὅδε χρόνος σύν κόσμῳ ἐδαμιουργήθη: “As the heavens were formerly made according to the eternal pattern of the world in the intellectual mind, so time was made with this world according to the pattern of an age;” or that in Philo: Ἀιὼν ἀναγράφεται τοῦ νοητοῦ βίος ϰόσμου, ὡς αἰσθητοῦ χρόνος: “An age is described to be the length of the intellectual world, as time is the length of the visible world.” Many philosophers therefore have thought themselves obliged to deny that God exists in time. Τό, τ᾿ ἦν, τό, τ᾿ ἔσται, χρόνου γεγονότος εἴδη, φέροντες λανθάνομεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀίδιον οὐσίαν οὐκ ὀρθῶς, κ.τ.λ.: “Past and future are parts of that time which is made (with the world), and it is very wrong to apply these to an eternal being.” (Plato.) Ἔστιν ὁ Θεὸς, χρὴ φάναι, καὶ ἔστι κατ᾽ οὐδένα χρόνον ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τὸν ἀκίνητον, καὶ ἄχρονον καὶ ἀνέγκλιτον, καὶ οὗ πρότερον, οὐδέν ἐστιν, οὐδ᾽ ὕστερον οὐδὲ νεώτερον· ἀλλ᾿ εἷς ὢν ἑνὶ τῷ νῦν τὸ ἀεὶ πεπλήρωκε, κ.τ.λ.: “We must allow that God exists, though not in any time, but in a duration that has no succession, that is eternal and invariable, before