Fourth Proof

FOURTH PROOF

O my stubborn friend! Come, I shall show you something even stranger. Look! All these works and things in this land have changed and are changing. They do not remain in any one state. Note carefully that each of these lifeless bodies and unfeeling boxes has taken on the form of being absolutely dominant. Quite simply it is as though each rules all the others. Look at this machine next to us; [^6] it is as though issuing commands; all the necessities and substances necessary for its adornment and functioning come hastening to it from distant places. Look over there: that lifeless body [^7] is as though beckoning; it makes the largest bodies serve it and work in its own workplace. You may make further analogies in the same way.

[^6]:The machine indicates fruit-bearing trees. For they bear on their slender branches hundreds of workbenches and factories, and weave, adorn, and cook wonderful leaves, flowers and fruits, and stretch them out to us. Majestic trees like the pine and the cedar, even, set up their workbenches on dry rock, and work.

[^7]:This alludes to grains, seeds, and the eggs of flies. For example, a fly leaves its eggs on the leaves of the elm. Suddenly the huge tree turns its leaves into a mother’s womb and a cradle for the eggs, and into a store full of a honey-like food. Simply, in that way the tree, which is not fruit-producing, produces fruits bearing spirits.

Simply, everything subjugates to itself all the beings in this world. If you do not accept the existence of that hidden one, you have to attribute all his skills, arts, and perfections in the stones, earth, animals, and creatures resembling man everywhere in this land to the things themselves. In place of a single wonder-working being, which your mind deems unlikely, you have to accept millions like him, who are both opposed to one another and similar and one within the other so they do not cause confusion everywhere and the order be spoiled. Whereas if two meddlers interfere in a country, they cause confusion. For if there are two headmen in a village, or two governors in a town, or two kings in a country, the result is chaos. So what would happen if there were innumerable absolute rulers?

Fifth Proof

FIFTH PROOF

O my sceptical friend! Come, look carefully at the inscriptions of this vast palace, look at all the adornments of the town, see the ordering of this whole land; reflect on all the works of art in this world! See! If these inscriptions are not worked by the pen of someone hidden who possesses infinite skills and miraculous powers, and are attributed to unconscious causes, to blind chance and deaf nature, then every stone and every plant in this land has to be an inscriber so wondrous it can write a thousand books in every letter and include millions of works of art in a single inscription.