"
"But the materialists," said the astronomer, "urge that matter may
have qualities with which we are unacquainted."
"He who will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which he
knows because there may be something which he knows not; he that
can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is
not to be admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of
matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if
this conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to something
that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can
admit. If that which is known may be overruled by that which is
unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty."
"Yet let us not," said the astronomer, "too arrogantly limit the
Creator's power."
"It is no limitation of Omnipotence," replied the poet, "to suppose
that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same
proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the same number
cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on that
which is created incapable of cogitation.
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