OPINION OF THOSE WHO HOLD SPACE TO BE THE IMMENSITY OF GOD.
67. Overwhelmed by these difficulties, and unable to reconcile the reality which space offers us with nothing, or to conceive in any thing created the immobility, infinity, and perpetuity which we imagine in space, some philosophers have put forth the opinion that space is the immensity of God. At first sight this seems an extravagant absurdity, but if we wish fairly to prove the falsity of this opinion, we must do justice not only to the right intention of those who have defended it, and the sound explanations which they brought to their assistance, but also to thereasons which forced them to this extremity, and which, though certainly not weighty or solid, are far from being so contemptible as one may imagine.
68. The argument in favor of this opinion may be put in the following form. Space is something. Before God created the world space existed. It is not possible to conceive bodies as existing without space in which they are extended. Before they exist, we conceive this capacity in which they may be placed, as already existing. Therefore, space is eternal. There is no motion without space; and in the first instant of the creation bodies could move and be moved. Though we suppose only one body in the world, it could be moved; and this motion could be infinitely continued. Therefore space is infinite. Annihilate now this body also, and the extension in which it moved will remain; in it new bodies, new worlds may be created. Therefore space is indestructible. But an eternal, infinite, and indestructible being cannot be created. Therefore, space is uncreated. Therefore it is God himself. But it must be God inasmuch as we conceive him in relation to extension; and, therefore, space is the immensity of God. Immensity is the attribute by which God is in every part; it is an attribute which relates to extension. Space is, therefore, the immensity of God. Only by adopting this theory can we reasonably admit that space is eternal, infinite, and indestructible.
69. The objection to this opinion is that it destroys the simplicity of God. If space is a property of God, it is God; for, whatever is in God, is God. Therefore, as space is essentially extended, God too must be extended.
Clarke saw the force of this argument; he was made to feel it by the arguments of his adversary, Leibnitz; but he answers it very weakly. He says that space has parts, but they are not separable. But, however this may be, it iscertain that space has parts. True, in the idea of space we distinguish parts without separating them; but we really conceive them in it, and we cannot conceive space without them. Besides, if we should admit this theory, what would become of the proofs of the immateriality of the soul? If the infinite wisdom is extended, why may not the human soul with much more reason be so?
Carried away by his favorite idea, Clarke went so far as to write what we should not have expected from such a man, that: "In questions of this nature, when we speak of parts, we mean parts that areseparable, composite, and disunited like those of matter, which for this reason is always a compound and never a simple substance. Matter is not one substance, but a composition of substances. This is why,in my opinion, matter is incapable of thinking. This incapacity does not proceed from extension, but from the parts being distinct substances, disunited, and independent of each other."[45]This explanation tends to destroy the simplicity of thinking beings; for by simplicity has always been understood the absolute wanting of all parts and not the absence of this or that kind of parts. Inseparability does not destroy the existence of parts; it merely asserts the force of cohesion.
70. It is also to be feared that this doctrine opens the door to pantheism. It was even objected to Clarke that it made God the soul of the world, and although he defended himself from this charge, there still remains an objection which was not proposed to him, and which is a very serious one. If we say that God is space, or that space is a property of God, what hinders our saying that God is the world, or that the world is a property of God? The world isextended; but so is space. If God and space are not contradictory ideas in the same being, why are God and the universe contradictory? Clarke says that bodies are composed of different substances, that they are not one substance; but it is certain that all we know of bodies is that they are extended, and that they cause certain impressions in us. Since, then, extension is not repugnant to God, and much less so the causality of impressions, there can be no reason against saying that what Clarke calls distinct substances, are only the parts, or, if he prefers it, the properties of the infinite substance. Newton went so far as to say that space was the sensorium of God, and even Clarke maintained against Leibnitz that Newton's expression might bear a sound interpretation, as it was intended only as a comparison. But Leibnitz insists so strongly on this charge that it is plain that he had very great objections to this word.
71. Whatever tends to confound God with nature, or to place him in constant communication with it, otherwise than by pure acts of intellect and will, places us on a very slippery declivity, where we can hardly help being precipitated to the bottom, and at this bottom is pantheism, which is but a phasis of atheism.(30)