Article Selection from a paper by Lionel Beale | Note by H.P.B.
. . . I believe all materialistic doctrines, vary as they may in detail, will be found to agree in accepting as a truth,—if, indeed, they are not actually based on it,—the monstrous assumption that the living and the non-living are one, and that every living thins is just as much a machine as a watch, or a windmill, or a hydraulic apparatus.1 According to the material contention, everything owes its existence to the properties of the material particles out of which it is constructed. But is it not strange that it never seems to have occurred to the materialistic devotee that neither the watch, nor the steam-engine, nor the windmill, nor the hydraulic apparatus, nor any other machine known to, or made by, any individual in this world, is dependent for its construction upon the properties of the material particles of the matter out of which its several parts have been constructed!”
1. The assumption is “monstrous” indeed, as presented to us by modern materialism which rejects with the idea of a personal creator, every other intelligent principle in nature. But is it more “monstrous” or less illogical to attribute the creation of a boundless universe out of nothing and to father the same upon a finite and conditioned personal deity? There is much to say on both sides; and very soon it will be said.—Ed. [H.P.B.]