Page:Whole works of joseph butler.djvu/324

293 sir, that of two different expressions of the same thing, though equally clear to some persons, jet to others, one of them sometimes is very obscure, though the other be perfectly intelligible. Perhaps this may be my case here; and could I see those of your arguments of which I doubt, differently proposed, possibly I might yield a ready assent to them. This, sir, I cannot but think a sufficient excuse for the present trouble; it being such an one as I hope may prevail for an answer, with one who seems to aim at nothing more than that good work of instructing others. In your demonstration of the being and attributes of God, Prop. VI. (Edit. 2nd. p. 69, and 70,) you propose to prove the infinity or omnipresence of the self-existing Being. The former part of the proof seems highly probable; but the latter part, which seems to aim at demonstration, is not to me convincing. The latter part of the paragraph is, if I mistake not, an entire argument of itself, which runs thus: "To suppose a finite being to be self-existing, is to say, that it is a contradiction for that being not to exist, the absence of which may yet be conceived with- out a contradiction; which is the greatest absurdity in the world." The sense of these words, "the absence of which," seems plainly to be determined by the following sentence, to mean its absence from any particular place. Which sentence is to prove it to be an absurdity; and is this: "For if a being can, without a contradiction, be absent from one place, it may, without a contradiction, be absent from another place, and from all places." Now, supposing this to be a consequence, all that it proves is, that if a being can, without a contradiction, be absent from one place at one time, it may, without a contradiction, be absent from another place, and so from all places, at different times. (For I cannot see that if a being can be absent from one place at one time, therefore it may, without a contradiction, be absent from all places at the same time, i.e., may cease