Hugo Grotius · 41 of 132

SECT. X. A solution of the objection taken from hence, that the bodies after their dissolution cannot be restored.

BESIDES the objection which we have now answered, it is commonly alleged, that the bodies of men, after their dissolution, cannot be restored to the same frame again; but this is said without the least foundation. For most philosophers agree, that, though the things be ever so much changed, the matter of them still remains, capable of being formed into different shapes; and who will affirm, that God does not know at what places, though ever so far distant, the parts of that matter are, which go to the making up of a human body? or, that he has not power to bring them back and reunite them? and do the same in the universe, that we see chemists do in their furnaces and vessels, collect those particles which are of the same kind, though separated from one another? And there are examples in nature, which shew, that though the shape of things be ever so much changed, yet the things themselves return to their original form; as in seeds of trees and plants. Neither is that knot, which is objected by so many, such as cannot be loosed, viz. concerning human bodies passing into nourishment of wild beasts and cattle; who, after they are thus fed, are eaten again by men. For the greatest part of what is eaten by us is not converted into any part of our body, but goes into excrements or superfluities, such as spittle and choler: and much of that which has nourishment in it is consumed by diseases, internal heat, and the ambient air. Which being thus, God, who takes such care of all kinds, even of dumb creatures, may have such a particular regard to human bodies, that if any part of them should come to be food for other men, it should no more be converted into their substance, than poison or physic is; and so much the rather, because human flesh was not given to be food for men. And if it were otherwise, and that something which does not belong to the latter body must be taken from it, this will not make it a different body; for there happens a greater change of its particles in this life: nay, a butterfly is contained in a worm; and the substance of herbs, or of wine, in some very little thing, from whence they are again restored to their true bigness, Certainly, since these, and many other such like suppositions, may be made without any absurdity, there is no reason why the restoring of a body, after it is dissolved, should be reckoned amongst the things that are impossible; especially since learned men, such as Zoroaster amongst the Chaldeans, almost all the stoics, and Theopompus, among the peripatetics, believed that it could be, and that it would be.