Motion is a state in which matter may or many not find itself

We have experienced the impenetrability of a material body.

We have proven to ourselves that a certain force is required to change its motion.

We have seen that the collision of two bodies causes them to stop or be reflected or displace a resting body or, more generally, change their speed.

Yet how do such changes occur?

What is this power that bodies seem to have to act on one another?

We observe that some particles of matter are in motion, while others are at rest.

Hence, motion is not an essential property of matter.

Rather, motion is a state in which matter may find itself — or not.

We see only that material bodies can extract motion from each other.

The material particles moving in Nature received their motion from an external cause that is unknown hitherto.

The particles are themselves indifferent to motion or rest.

If at rest, they stay at reast.

Whereas moving bodies continue to move until something changes their motion.

When a moving particle of matter encounters another particle at rest, it passes on some or all of its motion.

Every collision of 2 bodies (whether one is at rest and the other moves, or both are moving) is accompanied by a change in motion.

The impact causes this change.

It would be absurd to say that a particle moves another particle, given that it can’t even move itself.

To identify the original cause of motion, the greatest philosopher of antiquity resorted to a Prime Mover, itself unmovable and indivisible.*

A modern philosopher recognizes:

• God as the author of all motion of material particles
• God’s direct intervention is continually necessary for every change and redistribution of motion.*

A modern philosopher is unable to understand how bodies can move other bodies.

So he denied that they did.

He concluded that when bodies hit or press on other bodies, it is God who makes them move. Their impact is nothing but a prompting for God to move them.

These philosophers assign the cause of motion to God because they do not know where else to put it.

They resort to an immaterial Being, since they cannot imagine that matter should have the power to produce, distribute and destroy motion.

But all the laws of motion and equilibrium should be based on a suitable principle, if we are to use them to prove God’s existence. This is regardless of whether bodies:

• can act directly on each other, or
• use some other interaction yet poorly understood.