To begin with, even if we do admit such atomic principles, their
existence does not in any way inevitably lead to either the necessity
of all things, or fatality. Let us, indeed, grant the existence of
atoms; now some will move downwards--that is, if there is an up
and down in the universe--others obliquely, by chance, in various
directions. As there will be no order, there will be nothing
determinate. Only what will be born of the atoms will be determinate.
It will therefore be impossible to guess or predict events, whether by
art--and indeed, how could there be any art in the midst of orderless
things?--or by enthusiasm, or divine inspiration; for prediction
implies that the future is determined. True, bodies will obey the
impulses necessarily communicated to them by the atoms; but how could
you explain the operations and affections of the soul by movements of
atoms? How could atomic shock, whether vertical or oblique, produce
in the soul these our reasonings, or appetites, whether necessarily,
or in any other way? What explanation could they give of the soul's
resistance to the impulsions of the body? By what concourse of atoms
will one man become a geometrician, another become a mathematician
and astronomer, and the other a philosopher? For, according to that
doctrine we no longer produce any act for which we are responsible, we
are even no longer living beings, since we undergo the impulsion of
bodies that affect us just as they do inanimate things.