Title: The Existence of God
Author: Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe-, 1651-1715
Language: English
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THE EXISTENCE OF GOD



INTRODUCTION



An ancestor of the French divine who under the name of Fenelon has
made for himself a household name in England as in France, was
Bertrand de Salignac, Marquis de la Mothe Fenelon, who in 1572, as
ambassador for France, was charged to soften as much as he could the
resentment of our Queen Elizabeth when news came of the massacre of
St. Bartholomew.  Our Fenelon, claimed in brotherhood by Christians
of every denomination, was born nearly eighty years after that time,
at the chateau of Fenelon in Perigord, on the 6th of August, 1651.
To the world he is Fenelon; he was Francois de Salignac de la Mothe
Fenelon to the France of his own time.

Fenelon was taught at home until the age of twelve, then sent to the
University of Cahors, where he began studies that were continued at
Paris in the College du Plessis.  There he fastened upon theology,
and there he preached, at the age of fifteen, his first sermon.  He
entered next into the seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he took holy
orders in the year 1675, at the age of twenty-four.  As a priest,
while true to his own Church, he fastened on Faith, Hope, and
Charity as the abiding forces of religion, and for him also the
greatest of these was Charity.

During the next three years of his life Fenelon was among the young
priests who preached and catechised in the church of St. Sulpice and
laboured in the parish.  He wrote for St. Sulpice Litanies of the
Infant Jesus, and had thought of going out as missionary to the
Levant.  The Archbishop of Paris, however, placed him at the head of
a community of "New Catholics," whose function was to confirm new
converts in their faith, and help to bring into the fold those who
appeared willing to enter.  Fenelon took part also in some of the
Conferences on Scripture that were held at Saint Germain and
Versailles between 1672 and 1685.  In 1681 an uncle, who was Bishop
of Sarlat, resigned in Fenelon's favour the Deanery of Carenas,
which produced an annual income of three or four thousand livres.
It was while he held this office that Fenelon published a book on
the "Education of Girls," at the request of the Duchess of
Beauvilliers, who asked for guidance in the education of her
children.

Fenelon sought the friendship of Bossuet, who revised for him his
next book, a "Refutation of the System of Malebranche concerning
Nature and Grace."  His next book, written just before the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, opposed the lawfulness of
the ministrations of the Protestant clergy; and after the Edict,
Fenelon was, on the recommendation of Bossuet, placed at the head of
the Catholic mission to Poitou.  He brought to his work of
conversion or re-conversion Charity, and a spirit of concession that
brought on him the attacks of men unlike in temper.

When Louis XIV. placed his grandson, the young Duke of Burgundy,
under the care of the Duke of Beauvilliers, the Duke of Beauvilliers
chose Fenelon for teacher of the pupil who was heir presumptive to
the throne.  Fenelon's "Fables" were written as part of his
educational work.  He wrote also for the young Duke of Burgundy his
"Telemaque"--used only in MS.--and his "Dialogues of the Dead."
While thus living in high favour at Court, Fenelon sought nothing
for himself or his friends, although at times he was even in want of
money.  In 1693--as preceptor of a royal prince rather than as
author--Fenelon was received into the French Academy.  In 1694
Fenelon was made Abbot of Saint-Valery, and at the end of that year
he wrote an anonymous letter to Louis XIV. upon wrongful wars and
other faults committed in his reign.  A copy of it has been found in
Fenelon's handwriting.  The king may not have read it, or may not
have identified the author, who was not stayed by it from promotion
in February of the next year (1695) to the Archbishopric of Cambray.
He objected that the holding of this office was inconsistent with
his duties as preceptor of the King's grandchildren.  Louis replied
that he could live at Court only for three months in the year, and
during the other nine direct the studies of his pupils from Cambray.

Bossuet took part in the consecration of his friend Fenelon as
Archbishop of Cambray; but after a time division of opinion arose.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon became in 1676 a widow at the
age of twenty-eight, with three children, for whose maintenance she
gave up part of her fortune, and she then devoted herself to the
practice and the preaching of a spiritual separation of the soul
from earthly cares, and rest in God.  She said with Galahad, "If I
lose myself, I save myself."  Her enthusiasm for a pure ideal,
joined to her eloquence, affected many minds.  It provoked
opposition in the Church and in the Court, which was for the most
part gross and self-seeking.  Madame Guyon was attacked, even
imprisoned.  Fenelon felt the charm of her spiritual aspiration,
and, without accepting its form, was her defender.  Bossuet attacked
her views.  Fenelon published "Maxims of the Saints on the Interior
Life."  Bossuet wrote on "The States of Prayer."  These were the
rival books in a controversy about what was called "Quietism."
Bossuet afterwards wrote a "Relation sur le Quietisme," of which
Fenelon's copy, charged with his own marginal comments, is in the
British Museum.  In March, 1699, the Pope finally decided against
Fenelon, and condemned his "Maxims of the Saints."  Fenelon read
from his pulpit the brief of condemnation, accepted the decision of
the Pope, and presented to his church a piece of gold plate, on
which the Angel of Truth was represented trampling many errors under
foot, and among them his own "Maxims of the Saints."  At Court,
Fenelon was out of favour.  "Telemaque," written for the young Duke
of Burgundy, had not been published; but a copy having been obtained
through a servant, it was printed, and its ideal of a true king and
a true Court was so unlike his Majesty Louis XIV. and the Court of
France, and the image of what ought not to be was so like what was,
that it was resented as a libel.  "Telemaque" was publicly
condemned; Fenelon was banished from Court, and restrained within
the limits of his diocese.  Though separated from his pupil, the
young Duke of Burgundy (who died in 1712), Fenelon retained his
pupil's warm affection.  The last years of his own life Fenelon gave
to his work in Cambray, until his death on the 7th of January, 1715.
He wrote many works, of which this is one, and they have been
collected into twenty volumes.  The translation here given was
anonymous, and was first published in the year 1713.

H. M.



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD



SECTION I.  Metaphysical Proofs of the Existence of God are not
within Everybody's reach.


I cannot open my eyes without admiring the art that shines
throughout all nature; the least cast suffices to make me perceive
the Hand that makes everything.

Men accustomed to meditate upon metaphysical truths, and to trace up
things to their first principles, may know the Deity by its idea;
and I own that is a sure way to arrive at the source of all truth.
But the more direct and short that way is, the more difficult and
unpassable it is for the generality of mankind who depend on their
senses and imagination.

An ideal demonstration is so simple, that through its very
simplicity it escapes those minds that are incapable of operations
purely intellectual.  In short, the more perfect is the way to find
the First Being, the fewer men there are that are capable to follow
it.


SECT.  II.  Moral Proofs of the Existence of God are fitted to every
man's capacity.


But there is a less perfect way, level to the meanest capacity.  Men
the least exercised in reasoning, and the most tenacious of the
prejudices of the senses, may yet with one look discover Him who has
drawn Himself in all His works.  The wisdom and power He has stamped
upon everything He has made are seen, as it were, in a glass by
those that cannot contemplate Him in His own idea.  This is a
sensible and popular philosophy, of which any man free from passion
and prejudice is capable.  Humana autem anima rationalis est, quae
mortalibus peccati poena tenebatur, ad hoc diminutionis redacta ut
per conjecturas rerum visibilium ad intelligenda invisibilia
niteretur; that is, "The human soul is still rational, but in such a
manner that, being by the punishment of sin detained in the bonds of
death, it is so far reduced that it can only endeavour to arrive at
the knowledge of things invisible through the visible."


SECT.  III.  Why so few Persons are attentive to the Proofs Nature
affords of the Existence of God.


If a great number of men of subtle and penetrating wit have not
discovered God with one cast of the eye upon nature, it is not
matter of wonder; for either the passions they have been tossed by
have still rendered them incapable of any fixed reflection, or the
false prejudices that result from passions have, like a thick cloud,
interposed between their eyes and that noble spectacle.  A man
deeply concerned in an affair of great importance, that should take
up all the attention of his mind, might pass several days in a room
treating about his concerns without taking notice of the proportions
of the chamber, the ornaments of the chimney, and the pictures about
him, all which objects would continually be before his eyes, and yet
none of them make any impression upon him.  In this manner it is
that men spend their lives; everything offers God to their sight,
and yet they see it nowhere.  "He was in the world, and the world
was made by Him, and nevertheless the world did not know Him"--In
mundo erat, et mundus per ipsum factus est, et mundus eum non
cognovit.  They pass away their lives without perceiving that
sensible representation of the Deity.  Such is the fascination of
worldly trifles that obscures their eyes!  Fascinatio nugacitatis
obscurat bona.  Nay, oftentimes they will not so much as open them,
but rather affect to keep them shut, lest they should find Him they
do not look for.  In short, what ought to help most to open their
eyes serves only to close them faster; I mean the constant duration
and regularity of the motions which the Supreme Wisdom has put in
the universe.  St. Austin tells us those great wonders have been
debased by being constantly renewed; and Tully speaks exactly in the
same manner.  "By seeing every day the same things, the mind grows
familiar with them as well as the eyes.  It neither admires nor
inquires into the causes of effects that are ever seen to happen in
the same manner, as if it were the novelty, and not the importance
of the thing itself, that should excite us to such an inquiry."  Sed
assiduitate quotidiana et consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi,
neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper
vident, perinde quasi novit as nos magis quam magnitudo rerum debeat
ad exquirendas causas excitare.


SECT.  IV.  All Nature shows the Existence of its Maker.


But, after all, whole nature shows the infinite art of its Maker.
When I speak of an art, I mean a collection of proper means chosen
on purpose to arrive at a certain end; or, if you please, it is an
order, a method, an industry, or a set design.  Chance, on the
contrary, is a blind and necessary cause, which neither sets in
order nor chooses anything, and which has neither will nor
understanding.  Now I maintain that the universe bears the character
and stamp of a cause infinitely powerful and industrious; and, at
the same time, that chance (that is, the blind and fortuitous
concourse of causes necessary and void of reason) cannot have formed
this universe.  To this purpose it is not amiss to call to mind the
celebrated comparisons of the ancients.


SECT.  V.  Noble Comparisons proving that Nature shows the Existence
of its Maker.  First Comparison, drawn from Homer's "Iliad."


Who will believe that so perfect a poem as Homer's "Iliad" was not
the product of the genius of a great poet, and that the letters of
the alphabet, being confusedly jumbled and mixed, were by chance, as
it were by the cast of a pair of dice, brought together in such an
order as is necessary to describe, in verses full of harmony and
variety, so many great events; to place and connect them so well
together; to paint every object with all its most graceful, most
noble, and most affecting attendants; in short, to make every person
speak according to his character in so natural and so forcible a
manner?  Let people argue and subtilise upon the matter as much as
they please, yet they never will persuade a man of sense that the
"Iliad" was the mere result of chance.  Cicero said the same in
relation to Ennius's "Annals;" adding that chance could never make
one single verse, much less a whole poem.  How then can a man of
sense be induced to believe, with respect to the universe, a work
beyond contradiction more wonderful than the "Iliad," what his
reason will never suffer him to believe in relation to that poem?
Let us attend another comparison, which we owe to St. Gregory
Nazianzenus.


SECT.  VI.  Second Comparison, drawn from the Sound of Instruments.


If we heard in a room, from behind a curtain, a soft and harmonious
instrument, should we believe that chance, without the help of any
human hand, could have formed such an instrument?  Should we say
that the strings of a violin, for instance, had of their own accord
ranged and extended themselves on a wooden frame, whose several
parts had glued themselves together to form a cavity with regular
apertures?  Should we maintain that the bow formed without art
should be pushed by the wind to touch every string so variously, and
with such nice justness?  What rational man could seriously
entertain a doubt whether a human hand touched such an instrument
with so much harmony?  Would he not cry out, "It is a masterly hand
that plays upon it?"  Let us proceed to inculcate the same truth.


SECT.  VII.  Third Comparison, drawn from a Statue.


If a man should find in a desert island a fine statue of marble, he
would undoubtedly immediately say, "Sure, there have been men here
formerly; I perceive the workmanship of a skilful statuary; I admire
with what niceness he has proportioned all the limbs of this body,
in order to give them so much beauty, gracefulness, majesty, life,
tenderness, motion, and action!"

What would such a man answer if anybody should tell him, "That's
your mistake; a statuary never carved that figure.  It is made, I
confess, with an excellent gusto, and according to the rules of
perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it.  Among so many
pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord
in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the
mountains; a violent storm has thrown it plumb upright on this
pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place.  It
is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals
that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese.  You would
think, it is true, that this figure walks, lives, thinks, and is
just going to speak.  But, however, it is not in the least beholden
to art; and it is only a blind stroke of chance that has thus so
well finished and placed it."


SECT.  VIII.  Fourth Comparison, drawn from a Picture.


If a man had before his eyes a fine picture, representing, for
example, the passage of the Red Sea, with Moses, at whose voice the
waters divide themselves, and rise like two walls to let the
Israelites pass dryfoot through the deep, he would see, on the one
side, that innumerable multitude of people, full of confidence and
joy, lifting up their hands to heaven; and perceive, on the other
side, King Pharaoh with the Egyptians frighted and confounded at the
sight of the waves that join again to swallow them up.  Now, in good
earnest, who would be so bold as to affirm that a chambermaid,
having by chance daubed that piece of cloth, the colours had of
their own accord ranged themselves in order to produce that lively
colouring, those various attitudes, those looks so well expressing
different passions, that elegant disposition of so many figures
without confusion, that decent plaiting of draperies, that
management of lights, that degradation of colours, that exact
perspective--in short, all that the noblest genius of a painter can
invent?  If there were no more in the case than a little foam at the
mouth of a horse, I own, as the story goes, and which I readily
allow without examining into it, that a stroke of a pencil thrown in
a pet by a painter might once in many ages happen to express it
well.  But, at least, the painter must beforehand have, with design,
chosen the most proper colours to represent that foam, in order to
prepare them at the end of his pencil; and, therefore, it were only
a little chance that had finished what art had begun.  Besides, this
work of art and chance together being only a little foam, a confused
object, and so most proper to credit a stroke of chance--an object
without form, that requires only a little whitish colour dropped
from a pencil, without any exact figure or correction of design.
What comparison is there between that foam with a whole design of a
large continued history, in which the most fertile fancy and the
boldest genius, supported by the perfect knowledge of rules, are
scarce sufficient to perform what makes an excellent picture?  I
cannot prevail with myself to leave these instances without desiring
the reader to observe that the most rational men are naturally
extreme loath to think that beasts have no manner of understanding,
and are mere machines.  Now, whence proceeds such an invincible
averseness to that opinion in so many men of sense?  It is because
they suppose, with reason, that motions so exact, and according to
the rules of perfect mechanism, cannot be made without some
industry; and that artless matter alone cannot perform what argues
so much knowledge.  Hence it appears that sound reason naturally
concludes that matter alone cannot, either by the simple laws of
motion, or by the capricious strokes of chance, make even animals
that are mere machines.  Those philosophers themselves, who will not
allow beasts to have any reasoning faculty, cannot avoid
acknowledging that what they suppose to be blind and artless in
these machines is yet full of wisdom and art in the First Mover, who
made their springs and regulated their movements.  Thus the most
opposite philosophers perfectly agree in acknowledging that matter
and chance cannot, without the help of art, produce all we observe
in animals.


SECT.  IX.  A Particular Examination of Nature.


After these comparisons, about which I only desire the reader to
consult himself, without any argumentation, I think it is high time
to enter into a detail of Nature.  I do not pretend to penetrate
through the whole; who is able to do it?  Neither do I pretend to
enter into any physical discussion.  Such way of reasoning requires
a certain deep knowledge, which abundance of men of wit and sense
never acquired; and, therefore, I will offer nothing to them but the
simple prospect of the face of Nature.  I will entertain them with
nothing but what everybody knows, and which requires only a little
calm and serious attention.


SECT.  X.  Of the General Structure of the Universe.


Let us, in the first place, stop at the great object that first
strikes our sight, I mean the general structure of the universe.
Let us cast our eyes on this earth that bears us.  Let us look on
that vast arch of the skies that covers us; those immense regions of
air, and depths of water that surround us; and those bright stars
that light us.  A man who lives without reflecting thinks only on
the parts of matter that are near him, or have any relation to his
wants.  He only looks upon the earth as on the floor of his chamber,
and on the sun that lights him in the daytime as on the candle that
lights him in the night.  His thoughts are confined within the place
he inhabits.  On the contrary, a man who is used to contemplate and
reflect carries his looks further, and curiously considers the
almost infinite abysses that surround him on all sides.  A large
kingdom appears then to him but a little corner of the earth; the
earth itself is no more to his eyes than a point in the mass of the
universe; and he admires to see himself placed in it, without
knowing which way he came there.


SECT.  XI.  Of the Earth.


Who is it that hung and poised this motionless globe of the earth?
Who laid its foundation?  Nothing seems more vile and contemptible;
for the meanest wretches tread it under foot; but yet it is in order
to possess it that we part with the greatest treasures.  If it were
harder than it is, man could not open its bosom to cultivate it; and
if it were less hard it could not bear them, and they would sink
everywhere as they do in sand, or in a bog.  It is from the
inexhaustible bosom of the earth we draw what is most precious.
That shapeless, vile, and rude mass assumes the most various forms;
and yields alone, by turns, all the goods we can desire.  That dirty
soil transforms itself into a thousand fine objects that charm the
eye.  In the compass of one year it turns into branches, twigs,
buds, leaves, blossoms, fruits, and seeds, in order, by those
various shapes, to multiply its liberalities to mankind.  Nothing
exhausts the earth; the more we tear her bowels the more she is
liberal.  After so many ages, during which she has produced
everything, she is not yet worn out.  She feels no decay from old
age, and her entrails still contain the same treasures.  A thousand
generations have passed away, and returned into her bosom.
Everything grows old, she alone excepted:  for she grows young again
every year in the spring.  She is never wanting to men; but foolish
men are wanting to themselves in neglecting to cultivate her.  It is
through their laziness and extravagance they suffer brambles and
briars to grow instead of grapes and corn.  They contend for a good
they let perish.  The conquerors leave uncultivated the ground for
the possession of which they have sacrificed the lives of so many
thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble.  Men
have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated;
and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected
ground in dispute.  The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a
hundred times more men than now she does.  Even the unevenness of
ground which at first seems to be a defect turns either into
ornament or profit.  The mountains arose and the valleys descended
to the place the Lord had appointed for them.  Those different
grounds have their particular advantages, according to the divers
aspects of the sun.  In those deep valleys grow fresh and tender
grass to feed cattle.  Next to them opens a vast champaign covered
with a rich harvest.  Here, hills rise like an amphitheatre, and are
crowned with vineyards and fruit trees.  There high mountains carry
aloft their frozen brows to the very clouds, and the torrents that
run down from them become the springs of rivers.  The rocks that
show their craggy tops bear up the earth of mountains just as the
bones bear up the flesh in human bodies.  That variety yields at
once a ravishing prospect to the eye, and, at the same time,
supplies the divers wants of man.  There is no ground so barren but
has some profitable property.  Not only black and fertile soil but
even clay and gravel recompense a man's toil.  Drained morasses
become fruitful; sand for the most part only covers the surface of
the earth; and when, the husbandman has the patience to dig deeper
he finds a new ground that grows fertile as fast as it is turned and
exposed to the rays of the sun.

There is scarce any spot of ground absolutely barren if a man do not
grow weary of digging, and turning it to the enlivening sun, and if
he require no more from it than it is proper to bear, amidst stones
and rocks there is sometimes excellent pasture; and their cavities
have veins, which, being penetrated by the piercing rays of the sun,
furnish plants with most savoury juices for the feeding of herds and
flocks.  Even sea-coasts that seem to be the most sterile and wild
yield sometimes either delicious fruits or most wholesome medicines
that are wanting in the most fertile countries.  Besides, it is the
effect of a wise over-ruling providence that no land yields all that
is useful to human life.  For want invites men to commerce, in order
to supply one another's necessities.  It is therefore that want that
is the natural tie of society between nations:  otherwise all the
people of the earth would be reduced to one sort of food and
clothing; and nothing would invite them to know and visit one
another.


SECT.  XII.  Of Plants.


All that the earth produces being corrupted, returns into her bosom,
and becomes the source of a new production.  Thus she resumes all
she has given in order to give it again.  Thus the corruption of
plants, and the excrements of the animals she feeds, feed her, and
improve her fertility.  Thus, the more she gives the more she
resumes; and she is never exhausted, provided they who cultivate her
restore to her what she has given.  Everything comes from her bosom,
everything returns to it, and nothing is lost in it.  Nay, all seeds
multiply there.  If, for instance, you trust the earth with some
grains of corn, as they corrupt they germinate and spring; and that
teeming parent restores with usury more ears than she had received
grains.  Dig into her entrails, you will find in them stone and
marble for the most magnificent buildings.  But who is it that has
laid up so many treasures in her bosom, upon condition that they
should continually produce themselves anew?  Behold how many
precious and useful metals; how many minerals designed for the
conveniency of man!

Admire the plants that spring from the earth:  they yield food for
the healthy, and remedies for the sick.  Their species and virtues
are innumerable.  They deck the earth, yield verdure, fragrant
flowers, and delicious fruits.  Do you see those vast forests that
seem as old as the world?  Those trees sink into the earth by their
roots, as deep as their branches shoot up to the sky.  Their roots
defend them against the winds, and fetch up, as it were by
subterranean pipes, all the juices destined to feed the trunk.  The
trunk itself is covered with a tough bark that shelters the tender
wood from the injuries of the air.  The branches distribute by
several pipes the sap which the roots had gathered up in the trunk.
In summer the boughs protect us with their shadow against the
scorching rays of the sun.  In winter, they feed the fire that
preserves in us natural heat.  Nor is burning the only use wood is
fit for; it is a soft though solid and durable matter, to which the
hand of man gives, with ease, all the forms he pleases for the
greatest works of architecture and navigation.  Moreover, fruit
trees by bending their boughs towards the earth seem to offer their
crop to man.  The trees and plants, by letting their fruit or seed
drop down, provide for a numerous posterity about them.  The
tenderest plant, the least of herbs and pulse are, in little, in a
small seed, all that is displayed in the highest plants and largest
tree.  Earth that never changes produces all those alterations in
her bosom.


SECT.  XIII.  Of Water.


Let us now behold what we call water.  It is a liquid, clear, and
transparent body.  On the one hand it flows, slips, and runs away;
and on the other it assumes all the forms of the bodies that
surround it, having properly none of its own.  If water were more
rarefied, or thinner, it would be a kind of air; and so the whole
surface of the earth would be dry and sterile.  There would be none
but volatiles; no living creature could swim; no fish could live;
nor would there be any traffic by navigation.  What industrious and
sagacious hand has found means to thicken the water, by subtilising
the air, and so well to distinguish those two sorts of fluid bodies?
If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain
those prodigious floating buildings, called ships.  Bodies that have
the least ponderosity would presently sink under water.  Who is it
that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so
exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating,
so slippery, so incapable of any consistency:  and yet so strong to
bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy
bodies?  It is docile; man leads it about as a rider does a well-
managed horse.  He distributes it as he pleases; he raises it to the
top of steep mountains, and makes use of its weight to let it fall,
in order to rise again, as high as it was at first.  But man who
leads waters with such absolute command is in his turn led by them.
Water is one of the greatest moving powers that man can employ to
supply his defects in the most necessary arts, either through the
smallness or weakness of his body.  But the waters which,
notwithstanding their fluidity, are such ponderous bodies, do
nevertheless rise above our heads, and remain a long while hanging
there.  Do you see those clouds that fly, as it were, on the wings
of the winds?  If they should fall, on a sudden, in watery pillars,
rapid like a torrent, they would drown and destroy everything where
they should happen to fall, and the other grounds would remain dry.
What hand keeps them in those pendulous reservatories, and permits
them to fall only by drops as if they distilled through a gardener's
watering-pot?  Whence comes it that in some hot countries, where
scarce any rain ever falls, the nightly dews are so plentiful that
they supply the want of rain; and that in other countries, such as
the banks of the Nile and Ganges, the regular inundation of rivers,
at certain seasons of the year, never fails to make up what the
inhabitants are deficient in for the watering of the ground?  Can
one imagine measures better concerted to render all countries
fertile and fruitful?

Thus water quenches, not only the thirst of men, but likewise of
arid lands:  and He who gave us that fluid body has carefully
distributed it throughout the earth, like pipes in a garden.  The
waters fall from the tops of mountains where their reservatories are
placed.  They gather into rivulets in the bottom of valleys.  Rivers
run in winding streams through vast tracts of land, the better to
water them; and, at last, they precipitate themselves into the sea,
in order to make it the centre of commerce for all nations.  That
ocean, which seems to be placed in the midst of lands, to make an
eternal separation between them, is, on the contrary, the common
rendezvous of all the people of the earth, who could not go by land
from one end of the world to the other without infinite fatigue,
tedious journeys, and numberless dangers.  It is by that trackless
road, across the bottomless deep, that the whole world shakes hands
with the new; and that the new supplies the old with so many
conveniences and riches.  The waters, distributed with so much art,
circulate in the earth, just as the blood does in a man's body.  But
besides this perpetual circulation of the water, there is besides
the flux and reflux of the sea.  Let us not inquire into the causes
of so mysterious an effect.  What is certain is that the tide
carries, or brings us back to certain places, at precise hours.  Who
is it that makes it withdraw, and then come back with so much
regularity?  A little more or less motion in that fluid mass would
disorder all nature; for a little more motion in a tide or flood
would drown whole kingdoms.  Who is it that knew how to take such
exact measures in immense bodies?  Who is it that knew so well how
to keep a just medium between too much and too little?  What hand
has set to the sea the unmovable boundary it must respect through
the series of all ages by telling it:  There, thy proud waves shall
come and break?  But these waters so fluid become, on a sudden,
during the winter, as hard as rocks.  The summits of high mountains
have, even at all times, ice and snow, which are the springs of
rivers, and soaking pasture-grounds render them more fertile.  Here
waters are sweet to quench the thirst of man; there they are briny,
and yield a salt that seasons our meat, and makes it incorruptible.
In fine, if I lift up my eyes, I perceive in the clouds that fly
above us a sort of hanging seas that serve to temper the air, break
the fiery rays of the sun, and water the earth when it is too dry.
What hand was able to hang over our heads those great reservatories
of waters?  What hand takes care never to let them fall but in
moderate showers?


SECT.  XIV.  Of the Air.


After having considered the waters, let us now contemplate another
mass yet of far greater extent.  Do you see what is called air?  It
is a body so pure, so subtle, and so transparent, that the rays of
the stars, seated at a distance almost infinite from us, pierce
quite through it, without difficulty, and in an instant, to light
our eyes.  Had this fluid body been a little less subtle, it would
either have intercepted the day from us, or at most would have left
us but a duskish and confused light, just as when the air is filled
with thick fogs.  We live plunged in abysses of air, as fishes do in
abysses of water.  As the water, if it were subtilised, would become
a kind of air, which would occasion the death of fishes, so the air
would deprive us of breath if it should become more humid and
thicker.  In such a case we should drown in the waves of that
thickened air, just as a terrestrial animal drowns in the sea.  Who
is it that has so nicely purified that air we breathe?  If it were
thicker it would stifle us; and if it were too subtle it would want
that softness which continually feeds the vitals of man.  We should
be sensible everywhere of what we experience on the top of the
highest mountains, where the air is so thin that it yields no
sufficient moisture and nourishment for the lungs.  But what
invisible power raises and lays so suddenly the storms of that great
fluid body, of which those of the sea are only consequences?  From
what treasury come forth the winds that purify the air, cool
scorching heats, temper the sharpness of winter, and in an instant
change the whole face of heaven?  On the wings of those winds the
clouds fly from one end of the horizon to the other.  It is known
that certain winds blow in certain seas, at some stated seasons.
They continue a fixed time, and others succeed them, as it were on
purpose, to render navigation both commodious and regular:  so that
if men are but as patient, and as punctual as the winds, they may,
with ease, perform the longest voyages.


SECT.  XV.  Of Fire.


Do you see that fire that seems kindled in the stars, and spreads
its light on all sides?  Do you see that flame which certain
mountains vomit up, and which the earth feeds with sulphur within
its entrails?  That same fire peaceably lurks in the veins of
flints, and expects to break out, till the collision of another body
excites it to shock cities and mountains.  Man has found the way to
kindle it, and apply it to all his uses, both to bend the hardest
metals, and to feed with wood, even in the most frozen climes, a
flame that serves him instead of the sun, when the sun removes from
him.  That subtle flame glides and penetrates into all seeds.  It
is, as it were, the soul of all living things; it consumes all that
is impure, and renews what it has purified.  Fire lends its force
and activity to weak men.  It blows up, on a sudden, buildings and
rocks.  But have we a mind to confine it to a more moderate use?  It
warms man, and makes all sorts of food fit for his eating.  The
ancients, in admiration of fire, believed it to be a celestial gift,
which man had stolen from the gods.


SECT.  XVI.  Of Heaven.


It is time to lift up our eyes to heaven.  What power has built over
our heads so vast and so magnificent an arch?  What a stupendous
variety of admirable objects is here?  It is, no doubt, to present
us with a noble spectacle that an Omnipotent Hand has set before our
eyes so great and so bright objects.  It is in order to raise our
admiration of heaven, says Tully, that God made man unlike the rest
of animals.  He stands upright, and lifts up his head, that he may
be employed about the things that were above him.  Sometimes we see
a duskish azure sky, where the purest fires twinkle.  Sometimes we
behold, in a temperate heaven, the softest colours mixed with such
variety as it is not in the power of painting to imitate.  Sometimes
we see clouds of all shapes and figures, and of all the brightest
colours, which every moment shift that beautiful decoration by the
finest accidents and various effects of light.  What does the
regular succession of day and night denote?  For so many ages as are
past the sun never failed serving men, who cannot live without it.
Many thousand years are elapsed, and the dawn never once missed
proclaiming the approach of the day.  It always begins precisely at
a certain moment and place.  The sun, says the holy writ, knows
where it shall set every day.  By that means it lights, by turns,
the two hemispheres, or sides of the earth, and visits all those for
whom its beams are designed.  The day is the time for society and
labour; the night, wrapping up the earth with its shadow, ends, in
its turn, all manner of fatigue and alleviates the toil of the day.
It suspends and quiets all; and spreads silence and sleep
everywhere.  By refreshing the bodies it renews the spirits.  Soon
after day returns to summon again man to labour and revive all
nature.


SECT.  XVII.  Of the Sun.


But besides the constant course by which the sun forms days and
nights it makes us sensible of another, by which for the space of
six months it approaches one of the poles, and at the end of those
six months goes back with equal speed to visit the other pole.  This
excellent order makes one sun sufficient for the whole earth.  If it
were of a larger size at the same distance, it would set the whole
globe on fire and the earth would be burnt to ashes; and if, at the
same distance, it were lesser, the earth would be all over frozen
and uninhabitable.  Again, if in the same magnitude it were nearer
us, it would set us in flames; and if more remote, we should not be
able to live on the terrestrial globe for want of heat.  What pair
of compasses, whose circumference encircles both heaven and earth,
has fixed such just dimensions?  That star does no less befriend
that part of the earth from which it removes, in order to temper it,
than that it approaches to favour it with its beams.  Its kind,
beneficent aspect fertilises all it shines upon.  This change
produces that of the seasons, whose variety is so agreeable.  The
spring silences bleak frosty winds, brings forth blossoms and
flowers, and promises fruits.  The summer yields rich harvests.  The
autumn bestows the fruits promised by the spring.  The winter, which
is a kind of night wherein man refreshes and rests himself, lays up
all the treasures of the earth in its centre with no other design
but that the next spring may display them with all the graces of
novelty.  Thus nature, variously attired, yields so many fine
prospects that she never gives man leisure to be disgusted with what
he possesses.

But how is it possible for the course of the sun to be so regular?
It appears that star is only a globe of most subtle flame.  Now,
what is it that keeps that flame, so restless and so impetuous,
within the exact bounds of a perfect globe?  What hand leads that
flame in so strait a way and never suffers it to slip one side or
other?  That flame is held by nothing, and there is no body that can
either guide it or keep it under; for it would soon consume whatever
body it should be enclosed in.  Whither is it going?  Who has taught
it incessantly and so regularly to turn in a space where it is free
and unconstrained?  Does it not circulate about us on purpose to
serve us?  Now if this flame does not turn, and if on the contrary
it is our earth that turns, I would fain know how it comes to be so
well placed in the centre of the universe, as it were the focus or
the heart of all nature.  I would fain know also how it comes to
pass that a globe of so subtle matter never slips on any side in
that immense space that surrounds it, and wherein it seems to stand
with reason that all fluid bodies ought to yield to the impetuosity
of that flame.

In fine, I would fain know how it comes to pass that the globe of
the earth, which is so very hard, turns so regularly about that
planet in a space where no solid body keeps it fast to regulate its
course.  Let men with the help of physics contrive the most
ingenious reasons to explain this phenomenon; all their arguments,
supposing them to be true, will become proofs of the Deity.  The
more the great spring that directs the machine of the universe is
exact, simple, constant, certain, and productive of abundance of
useful effects, the more it is plain that a most potent and most
artful hand knew how to pitch upon the spring which is the most
perfect of all.


SECT.  XVIII.  Of the Stars.


But let us once more view that immense arched roof where the stars
shine, and which covers our heads like a canopy.  If it be a solid
vault, what architect built it?  Who is it that has fixed so many
great luminous bodies to certain places of that arch and at certain
distances?  Who is it that makes that vault turn so regularly about
us?  If on the contrary the skies are only immense spaces full of
fluid bodies, like the air that surrounds us, how comes it to pass
that so many solid bodies float in them without ever sinking or ever
coming nearer one another?  For all astronomical observations that
have been made in so many ages not the least disorder or irregular
motion has yet been discovered in the heavens.  Will a fluid body
range in such constant and regular order bodies that swim circularly
within its sphere?  But what does that almost innumerable multitude
of stars mean?  The profusion with which the hand of God has
scattered them through His work shows nothing is difficult to His
power.  He has cast them about the skies as a magnificent prince
either scatters money by handfuls or studs his clothes with precious
stones.  Let who will say, if he pleases, that the stars are as many
worlds like the earth we inhabit; I grant it for one moment; but
then, how potent and wise must He be who makes worlds as numberless
as the grains of sand that cover the sea-shore, and who, without any
trouble, for so many ages governs all these wandering worlds as a
shepherd does a flock of sheep?  If on the contrary they are only,
as it were, lighted torches to shine in our eyes in this small globe
called earth, how great is that power which nothing can fatigue,
nothing can exhaust?  What a profuse liberality it is to give man in
this little corner of the universe so marvellous a spectacle!

But among those stars I perceive the moon, which seems to share with
the sun the care and office of lighting us.  She appears at set
times with all the other stars, when the sun is obliged to go and
carry back the day to the other hemisphere.  Thus night itself,
notwithstanding its darkness, has a light, duskish indeed, but soft
and useful.  That light is borrowed from the sun, though absent:
and thus everything is managed with such excellent art in the
universe that a globe near the earth, and as dark as she of itself,
serves, nevertheless, to send back to her, by reflection, the rays
it receives from the sun; and that the sun lights by means of the
moon the people that cannot see him while he must light others.

It may be said that the motion of the stars is settled and regulated
by unchangeable laws.  I suppose it is; but this very supposition
proves what I labour to evince.  Who is it that has given to all
nature laws at once so constant and so wholesome, laws so very
simple, that one is tempted to believe they establish themselves of
their own accord, and so productive of beneficial and useful effects
that one cannot avoid acknowledging a marvellous art in them?
Whence proceeds the government of that universal machine which
incessantly works for us without so much as our thinking upon it?
To whom shall we ascribe the choice and gathering of so many deep
and so well conceited springs, and of so many bodies, great and
small, visible and invisible, which equally concur to serve us?  The
least atom of this machine that should happen to be out of order
would unhinge all nature.  For the springs and movements of a watch
are not put together with so much art and niceness as those of the
universe.  What then must be a design so extensive, so coherent, so
excellent, so beneficial?  The necessity of those laws, instead of
deterring me from inquiring into their author, does but heighten my
curiosity and admiration.  Certainly, it required a hand equally
artful and powerful to put in His work an order equally simple and
teeming, constant and useful.  Wherefore I will not scruple to say
with the Scripture, "Let every star haste to go whither the Lord
sends it; and when He speaks let them answer with trembling, Here we
are," Ecce adsumus.


SECT.  XIX.  Of Animals, Beasts, Fowl, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and
Insects.


But let us turn our eyes towards animals, which still are more
worthy of admiration than either the skies or stars.  Their species
are numberless.  Some have but two feet, others four, others again a
great many.  Some walk; others crawl, or creep; others fly; others
swim; others fly, walk, or swim, by turns.  The wings of birds, and
the fins of fishes, are like oars, that cut the waves either of air
or water, and steer the floating body either of the bird, or fish,
whose structure is like that of a ship.  But the pinions of birds
have feathers with a down, that swells in the air, and which would
grow unwieldy in the water.  And, on the contrary, the fins of
fishes have sharp and dry points, which cut the water, without
imbibing it, and which do not grow heavier by being wet.  A sort of
fowl that swim, such as swans, keep their wings and most of their
feathers above water, both lest they should wet them and that they
may serve them, as it were, for sails.  They have the art to turn
those feathers against the wind, and, in a manner, to tack, as ships
do when the wind does not serve.  Water-fowls, such as ducks, have
at their feet large skins that stretch, somewhat like rackets, to
keep them from sinking on the oozy and miry banks of rivers.

Amongst the animals, wild beasts, such as lions, have their biggest
muscles about the shoulders, thighs, and legs; and therefore these
animals are nimble, brisk, nervous, and ready to rush forward.
Their jaw-bones are prodigiously large, in proportion to the rest of
their bodies.  They have teeth and claws, which serve them, as
terrible weapons, to tear in pieces and devour other animals.  For
the same reason, birds of prey, such as eagles, have a beak and
pounces that pierce everything.  The muscles of their pinions are
extreme large and brawny, that their wings may have a stronger and
more rapid motion:  and so those creatures, though somewhat heavy,
soar aloft and tower up easily to the very clouds, from whence they
shoot, like a thunderbolt, on the quarry they have in view.  Other
animals have horns.  The greatest strength of some lies in their
backs and necks; and others can only kick.  Every species, however,
has both offensive and defensive arms.  Their hunting is a kind of
war, which they wage one against another, for the necessities of
life.  They have also laws and a government among themselves.  Some,
like tortoises, carry the house wherein they were born; others build
theirs, as birds do, on the highest branches of trees, to preserve
their young from the insult of unwinged creatures, and they even lay
their nests in the thickest boughs to hide them from their enemies.
Another, such as the beaver, builds in the very bottom of a pond the
sanctuary he prepares for himself, and knows how to cast up dikes
around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation.
Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in
one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide
for himself a subterranean retreat.  The cunning fox digs a kennel
with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either
surprised or trapped by the huntsmen.  The reptiles are of another
make.  They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of their
muscles; they creep, twist about, squeeze, and hold fast the bodies
they meet in their way; and easily slide everywhere.  Their organs
are almost independent one on the other; so that they still live
when they are cut into two.  The long-legged birds, says Cicero, are
also long-necked in proportion, that they may bring down their bill
to the ground, and take up their food.  It is the same with the
camel; but the elephant, whose neck through its bigness would be too
heavy if it were as long as that of the camel, was furnished with a
trunk, which is a contexture of nerves and muscles, which he
stretches, shrinks, winds, and turns every way, to seize on bodies,
lift them up, or throw them off:  for which reason the Latins called
that trunk a hand.

Certain animals seem to be made on purpose for man.  The dog is born
to caress and fawn upon him; to obey and be under command; to give
him an agreeable image of society, friendship, fidelity, and
tenderness; to be true to his trust; eagerly to hunt down, course,
and catch several other creatures, to leave them afterwards to man,
without retaining any part of the quarry.  The horse, and such other
animals, are within the reach and power of man; to ease him of his
labour, and to take upon them a thousand burdens.  They are born to
carry, to walk, to supply man's weakness, and to obey all his
motions.  Oxen are endowed with strength and patience, in order to
draw the plough and till the ground.  Cows yield streams of milk.
Sheep have in their fleeces a superfluity which is not for them, and
which still grows and renews, as it were to invite men to shear them
every year.  Even goats furnish man with a long hair, for which they
have no use, and of which he makes stuffs to cover himself.  The
skins of some beasts supply men with the finest and best linings, in
the countries that are most remote from the sun.

Thus the Author of nature has clothed beasts according to their
necessities; and their spoils serve afterwards to clothe men, and
keep them warm in those frozen climes.  The living creatures that
have little or no hair have a very thick and very hard skin, like
scales; others have even scales that cover one another, as tiles on
the top of a house, and which either open or shut, as it best suits
with the living creature, either to extend itself or shrink.  These
skins and scales serve the necessities of men:  and thus in nature,
not only plants but animals also are made for our use.  Wild beasts
themselves either grow tame or, at least, are afraid of man.  If all
countries were peopled and governed as they ought to be, there would
not be anywhere beasts should attack men.  For no wild beasts would
be found but in remote forests, and they would be preserved in order
to exercise the courage, strength, and dexterity of mankind, by a
sport that should represent war; so that there never would be any
occasion for real wars among nations.  But observe that living
creatures that are noxious to man are the least teeming, and that
the most useful multiply most.  There are, beyond comparison, more
oxen and sheep killed than bears or wolves; and nevertheless the
number of bears and wolves is infinitely less than that of oxen and
sheep still on earth.  Observe likewise, with Cicero, that the
females of every species have a number of teats proportioned to that
of the young ones they generally bring forth.  The more young they
bear, with the more milk-springs has nature supplied them, to suckle
them.

While sheep let their wool grow for our use, silk-worms, in
emulation with each other, spin rich stuffs and spend themselves to
bestow them upon us.  They make of their cod a kind of tomb, and
shutting up themselves in their own work, they are new-born under
another figure, in order to perpetuate themselves.  On the other
hand, the bees carefully suck and gather the juice of odorous and
fragrant flowers, in order to make their honey; and range it in such
an order as may serve for a pattern to men.  Several insects are
transformed, sometimes into flies, sometimes into worms, or maggots.
If one should think such insects useless, let him consider that what
makes a part of the great spectacle of the universe, and contributes
to its variety, is not altogether useless to sedate and
contemplative men.  What can be more noble, and more magnificent,
than that great number of commonwealths of living creatures so well
governed, and every species of which has a different frame from the
other?  Everything shows how much the skill and workmanship of the
artificer surpasses the vile matter he has worked upon.  Every
living creature, nay even gnats, appear wonderful to me.  If one
finds them troublesome, he ought to consider that it is necessary
that some anxiety and pain be mixed with man's conveniences:  for if
nothing should moderate his pleasures, and exercise his patience, he
would either grow soft and effeminate, or forget himself.


SECT.  XX.  Admirable Order in which all the Bodies that make up the
Universe are ranged.


Let us now consider the wonders that shine equally both in the
largest and the smallest bodies.  On the one side, I see the sun so
many thousand times bigger than the earth; I see him circulating in
a space, in comparison of which he is himself but a bright atom.  I
see other stars, perhaps still bigger than he, that roll in other
regions, still farther distant from us.  Beyond those regions, which
escape all measure, I still confusedly perceive other stars, which
can neither be counted nor distinguished.  The earth, on which I
stand, is but one point, in proportion to the whole, in which no
bound can ever be found.  The whole is so well put together, that
not one single atom can be put out of its place without unhinging
this immense machine; and it moves in such excellent order that its
very motion perpetuates its variety and perfection.  Sure it must be
the hand of a being that does everything without any trouble that
still keeps steady, and governs this great work for so many ages;
and whose fingers play with the universe, to speak with the
Scripture.


SECT.  XXI.  Wonders of the Infinitely Little.


On the other hand the work is no less to be admired in little than
in great:  for I find as well in little as in great a kind of
infinite that astonishes me.  It surpasses my imagination to find in
a hand-worm, as one does in an elephant or whale, limbs perfectly
well organised; a head, a body, legs, and feet, as distinct and as
well formed as those of the biggest animals.  There are in every
part of those living atoms, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries, blood;
and in that blood ramous particles and humours; in these humours
some drops that are themselves composed of several particles:  nor
can one ever stop in the discussion of this infinite composition of
so infinite a whole.

The microscope discovers to us in every object as it were a thousand
other objects that had escaped our notice.  But how many other
objects are there in every object discovered by the microscope which
the microscope itself cannot discover?  What should not we see if we
could still subtilise and improve more and more the instruments that
help out weak and dull sight?  Let us supply by our imagination what
our eyes are defective in; and let our fancy itself be a kind of
microscope, and represent to us in every atom a thousand new and
invisible worlds:  but it will never be able incessantly to paint to
us new discoveries in little bodies; it will be tired, and forced at
last to stop, and sink, leaving in the smallest organ of a body a
thousand wonders undiscovered.


SECT.  XXII.  Of the Structure or Frame of the Animal.


Let us confine ourselves within the animal's machine, which has
three things that never can be too much admired:  First, it has in
it wherewithal to defend itself against those that attack it, in
order to destroy it.  Secondly, it has a faculty of reviving itself
by food.  Thirdly, it has wherewithal to perpetuate its species by
generation.  Let us bestow some considerations on these three
things.


SECT.  XXIII.  Of the Instinct of the Animal.


Animals are endowed with what is called instinct, both to approach
useful and beneficial objects, and to avoid such as may be noxious
and destructive to them.  Let us not inquire wherein this instinct
consists, but content ourselves with matter of fact, without
reasoning upon it.

The tender lamb smells his dam afar off, and runs to meet her.  A
sheep is seized with horror at the approach of a wolf, and flies
away before he can discern him.  The hound is almost infallible in
finding out a stag, a buck, or a hare, only by the scent.  There is
in every animal an impetuous spring, which, on a sudden, gathers all
the spirits; distends all the nerves; renders all the joints more
supple and pliant; and increases in an incredible manner, upon
sudden dangers, his strength, agility, speed, and cunning, in order
to make him avoid the object that threatens his destruction.  The
question in this place is not to know whether beasts are endowed
with reason or understanding; for I do not pretend to engage in any
philosophical inquiry.  The motions I speak of are entirely
indeliberate, even in the machine of man.  If, for instance, a man
that dances on a rope should, at that time, reason on the laws and
rules of equilibrium, his reasoning would make him lose that very
equilibrium which he preserves admirably well without arguing upon
the matter, and reason would then be of no other use to him but to
throw him on the ground.  The same happens with beasts; nor will it
avail anything to object that they reason as well as men, for this
objection does not in the least weaken my proof; and their reasoning
can never serve to account for the motions we admire most in them.
Will any one affirm that they know the nicest rules of mechanics,
which they observe with perfect exactness, whenever they are to run,
leap, swim, hide themselves, double, use shifts to avoid pursuing
hounds, or to make use of the strongest part of their bodies to
defend themselves?  Will he say that they naturally understand the
mathematics which men are ignorant of?  Will he dare to advance that
they perform with deliberation and knowledge all those impetuous and
yet so exact motions which even men perform without study or
premeditation?  Will he allow them to make use of reason in those
motions, wherein it is certain man does not?  It is an instinct,
will he say, that beasts are governed by.  I grant it:  for it is,
indeed, an instinct.  But this instinct is an admirable sagacity and
dexterity, not in the beasts, who neither do, nor can then, have
time to reason, but in the superior wisdom that governs them.  That
instinct, or wisdom, that thinks and watches for beasts, in
indeliberate things, wherein they could neither watch nor think,
even supposing them to be as reasonable as we, can be no other than
the wisdom of the Artificer that made these machines.  Let us
therefore talk no more of instinct or nature, which are but fine
empty names in the mouth of the generality that pronounce them.
There is in what they call nature and instinct a superior art and
contrivance, of which human invention is but a shadow.  What is
beyond all question is, that there are in beasts a prodigious number
of motions entirely indeliberate, and which yet are performed
according to the nicest rules of mechanics.  It is the machine alone
that follows those rules:  which is a fact independent from all
philosophy; and matter of fact is ever decisive.  What would a man
think of a watch that should fly or slip away, turn, again, or
defend itself, for its own preservation, if he went about to break
it?  Would he not admire the skill of the artificer?  Could he be
induced to believe that the springs of that watch had formed,
proportioned, ranged, and united themselves, by mere chance?  Could
he imagine that he had clearly explained and accounted for such
industrious and skilful operation by talking of the nature and
instinct of a watch that should exactly show the hour to his master,
and slip away from such as should go about to break its springs to
pieces?


SECT.  XXIV.  Of Food.


What is more noble than a machine which continually repairs and
renews itself?  The animal, stinted to his own strength, is soon
tired and exhausted by labour; but the more he takes pains, the more
he finds himself pressed to make himself amends for his labour, by
more plentiful feeding.  Aliments daily restore the strength he had
lost.  He puts into his body another substance that becomes his own,
by a kind of metamorphosis.  At first it is pounded, and being
changed into a liquor, it purifies, as if it were strained through a
sieve, in order to separate anything that is gross from it;
afterwards it arrives at the centre, or focus of the spirits, where
it is subtilised, and becomes blood.  And running at last, and
penetrating through numberless vessels to moisten all the members,
it filtrates in the flesh, and becomes itself flesh.  So many
aliments, and liquors of various colours, are then no more than one
and the same flesh; and food which was but an inanimate body
preserves the life of the animal, and becomes part of the animal
himself; the other parts of which he was composed being exhaled by
an insensible and continual transpiration.  The matter which, for
instance, was four years ago such a horse, is now but air, or dung.
What was then either hay, or oats, is become that same horse, so
fiery and vigorous--at least, he is accounted the same horse,
notwithstanding this insensible change of his substance.


SECT.  XXV.  Of Sleep.


The natural attendant of food is sleep; in which the animal forbears
not only all his outward motions, but also all the principal inward
operations which might too much stir and dissipate the spirits.  He
only retains respiration, and digestion; so that all motions that
might wear out his strength are suspended, and all such as are
proper to recruit and renew it go on freely of themselves.  This
repose, which is a kind of enchantment, returns every night, while
darkness interrupts and hinders labour.  Now, who is it that
contrived such a suspension?  Who is it that so well chose the
operations that ought to continue; and, with so just discernment,
excluded all such as ought to be interrupted?  The next day all past
fatigue is gone and vanished.  The animal works on, as if he had
never worked before; and this reviving gives him a vivacity and
vigour that invites him to new labour.  Thus the nerves are still
full of spirits, the flesh smooth, the skin whole, though one would
think it should waste and tear; the living body of the animal soon
wears out inanimate bodies, even the most solid that are about it;
and yet does not wear out itself.  The skin of a horse, for
instance, wears out several saddles; and the flesh of a child,
though very delicate and tender, wears out many clothes, whilst it
daily grows stronger.  If this renewing of spirits were perfect, it
would be real immortality, and the gift of eternal youth.  But the
same being imperfect, the animal insensibly loses his strength,
decays and grows old, because everything that is created ought to
bear a mark of nothingness from which it was drawn; and have an end.


SECT.  XXVI.  Of Generation.


What is more admirable than the multiplication of animals?  Look
upon the individuals:  no animal is immortal.  Everything grows old,
everything passes away, everything disappears, everything, in short,
is annihilated.  Look upon the species:  everything subsists,
everything is permanent and immutable, though in a constant
vicissitude.  Ever since there have been on earth men that have
taken care to preserve the memory of events, no lions, tigers, wild
boars, or bears, were ever known to form themselves by chance in
caves or forests.  Neither do we see any fortuitous productions of
dogs or cats.  Bulls and sheep are never born of themselves, either
in stables, folds, or on pasture grounds.  Every one of those
animals owes his birth to a certain male and female of his species.

All those different species are preserved much the same in all ages.
We do not find that for three thousand years past any one has
perished or ceased; neither do we find that any one multiplies to
such an excess as to be a nuisance or inconveniency to the rest.  If
the species of lions, bears, and tigers multiplied to a certain
excessive degree, they would not only destroy the species of stags,
bucks, sheep, goats, and bulls, but even get the mastery over
mankind, and unpeople the earth.  Now who maintains so just a
measure as never either to extinguish those different species, or
never to suffer them to multiply too fast?

But this continual propagation of every species is a wonder with
which we are grown too familiar.  What would a man think of a
watchmaker who should have the art to make watches, which, of
themselves, should produce others ad infinitum in such a manner that
two original watches should be sufficient to multiply and perpetuate
their species over the whole earth?  What would he say of an
architect that should have the skill to build houses, which should
build others, to renew the habitations of men, before the first
should decay and be ready to fall to the ground?  It is, however,
what we daily see among animals.  They are no more, if you please,
than mere machines, as watches are.  But, after all, the Author of
these machines has endowed them with a faculty to reproduce or
perpetuate themselves ad infinitum by the conjunction of both sexes.
Affirm, if you please, that this generation of animals is performed
either by moulds or by an express configuration of every individual;
which of these two opinions you think fit to pitch upon, it comes
all to one; nor is the skill of the Artificer less conspicuous.  If
you suppose that at every generation the individual, without being
cast into a mould, receives a configuration made on purpose, I ask,
who it is that manages and directs the configuration of so
compounded a machine, and which argues so much art and industry?
If, on the contrary, to avoid acknowledging any art in the case you
suppose that everything is determined by the moulds, I go back to
the moulds themselves, and ask, who is it that prepared them?  In my
opinion they are still greater matter of wonder than the very
machines which are pretended to come out of them.

Therefore let who will suppose that there were moulds in the animals
that lived four thousand years ago, and affirm, if he pleases, that
those moulds were so inclosed one within another ad infinitum, that
there was a sufficient number for all the generations of those four
thousand years; and that there is still a sufficient number ready
prepared for the formation of all the animals that shall preserve
their species in all succeeding ages.  Now, these moulds, which, as
I have observed, must have all the configuration of the animal, are
as difficult to be explained or accounted for as the animals
themselves, and are besides attended with far more unexplicable
wonders.  It is certain that the configuration of every individual
animal requires no more art and power than is necessary to frame all
the springs that make up that machine; but when a man supposes
moulds:  first, he must affirm that every mould contains in little,
with unconceivable niceness, all the springs of the machine itself.
Now, it is beyond dispute that there is more art in making so
compound a work in little than in a larger bulk.  Secondly, he must
suppose that every mould, which is an individual prepared for a
first generation, contains distinctly within itself other moulds
contained within one another ad infinitum, for all possible
generations, in all succeeding ages.  Now what can be more artful
and more wonderful in matter of mechanism than such a preparation of
an infinite number of individuals, all formed beforehand in one from
which they are to spring?  Therefore the moulds are of no use to
explain the generations of animals without supposing any art or
skill.  For, on the contrary, moulds would argue a more artificial
mechanism and more wonderful composition.

What is manifest and indisputable, independently from all the
systems of philosophers, is that the fortuitous concourse of atoms
never produces, without generation, in any part of the earth, any
lions, tigers, bears, elephants, stags, bulls, sheep, cats, dogs, or
horses.  These and the like are never produced but by the encounter
of two of their kind of different sex.  The two animals that produce
a third are not the true authors of the art that shines in the
composition of the animal engendered by them.  They are so far from
knowing how to perform that art, that they do not so much as know
the composition or frame of the work that results from their
generation.  Nay, they know not so much as any particular spring of
it; having been no more than blind and unvoluntary instruments, made
use of for the performance of a marvellous art, to which they are
absolute strangers, and of which they are perfectly ignorant.  Now I
would fain know whence comes that art, which is none of theirs?
What power and wisdom knows how to employ, for the performance of
works of so ingenious and intricate a design, instruments so
uncapable to know what they are doing, or to have any notion of it?
Nor does it avail anything to suppose that beasts are endowed with
reason.  Let a man suppose them to be as rational as he pleases in
other things, yet he must own, that in generation they have no share
in the art that is conspicuous in the composition of the animals
they produce.

Let us carry the thing further, and take for granted the most
wonderful instances that are given of the skill and forecast of
animals.  Let us admire, as much as you please, the certainty with
which a hound takes a spring into a third way, as soon as he finds
by his nose that the game he pursues has left no scent in the other
two.  Let us admire the hind, who, they say, throws a good way off
her young fawn, into some hidden place, that the hounds may not find
him out by the scent of his strain.  Let us even admire the spider
who with her cobwebs lays subtle snares to trap flies, and fall
unawares upon them before they can disentangle themselves.  Let us
also admire the hern, who, they say, puts his head under his wing,
in order to hide his bill under his feathers, thereby to stick the
breast of the bird of prey that stoops at him.  Let us allow the
truth of all these wonderful instances of rationality; for all
nature is full of such prodigies.  But what must we infer from them?
In good earnest, if we carefully examine the matter, we shall find
that they prove too much.  Shall we say that animals are more
rational than we?  Their instinct has undoubtedly more certainty
than our conjectures.  They have learnt neither logic nor geometry,
neither have they any course or method of improvement, or any
science.  Whatever they do is done of a sudden without study,
preparation, or deliberation.  We commit blunders and mistakes every
hour of the day after we have a long while argued and consulted
together; whereas animals, without any reasoning or premeditation,
perform every hour what seems to require most discernment, choice,
and exactness.  Their instinct is in many things infallible; but
that word instinct is but a fair name void of sense.  For what can
an instinct more just, exact, precise, and certain than reason
itself mean but a more perfect reason?  We must therefore suppose a
wonderful reason and understanding either in the work or in the
artificer; either in the machine or in him that made it.  When, for
instance, I find that a watch shows the hours with such exactness as
surpasses my knowledge, I presently conclude that if the watch
itself does not reason, it must have been made by an artificer who,
in that particular, reasoned better and had more skill than myself.
In like manner, when I see animals, who every moment perform actions
that argue a more certain art and industry than I am master of, I
immediately conclude that such marvellous art must necessarily be
either in the machine or in the artificer that framed it.  Is it in
the animal himself?  But how is it possible he should be so wise and
so infallible in some things?  And if this art is not in him, it
must of necessity be in the Supreme Artificer that made that piece
of work, just as all the art of a watch is in the skill of the
watchmaker.


SECT.  XXVII.  Though Beasts commit some Mistakes, yet their
Instinct is, in many cases, Infallible.


Do not object to me that the instinct of beasts is in some things
defective, and liable to error.  It is no wonder beasts are not
infallible in everything, but it is rather a wonder they are so in
many cases.  If they were infallible in everything, they should be
endowed with a reason infinitely perfect; in short, they should be
deities.  In the works of an infinite Power there can be but a
finite perfection, otherwise God should make creatures like or equal
to Himself, which is impossible.  He therefore cannot place
perfection, nor consequently reason, in his works, without some
bounds and restrictions.  But those bounds do not prove that the
work is void of order or reason.  Because I mistake sometimes, it
does not follow that I have no reason at all, and that I do
everything by mere chance, but only that my reason is stinted and
imperfect.  In like manner, because a beast is not by his instinct
infallible in everything, though he be so in many, it does not
follow that there is no manner of reason in that machine, but only
that such a machine has not a boundless reason.  But, after all, it
is a constant truth that in the operations of that machine there is
a regular conduct, a marvellous art, and a skill which in many cases
amounts to infallibility.  Now, to whom shall we ascribe this
infallible skill?  To the work, or its Artificer?


SECT.  XXVIII.  It is impossible Beasts should have Souls.


If you affirm that beasts have souls different from their machines,
I immediately ask you, "Of what nature are those souls entirely
different from and united to bodies?  Who is it that knew how to
unite them to natures so vastly different?  Who is it that has such
absolute command over so opposite natures, as to put and keep them
in such a regular and constant a society, and wherein mutual
agreement and correspondence are so necessary and so quick?

If, on the contrary, you suppose that the same matter may sometimes
think, and sometimes not think, according to the various wrangling
and configurations it may receive, I will not tell you in this place
that matter cannot think; and that one cannot conceive that the
parts of a stone, without adding anything to it, may ever know
themselves, whatever degree of motion, whatever figure, you may give
them.  I will only ask you now wherein that precise ranging and
configuration of parts, which you speak of, consists?  According to
your opinion there must be a degree of motion wherein matter does
not yet reason, and then another much like it wherein, on a sudden,
it begins to reason and know itself.  Now, who is it that knew how
to pitch upon that precise degree of motion?  Who is it that has
discovered the line in which the parts ought to move?  Who is it
that has measured the dimensions so nicely as to find out and state
the bigness and figure every part must have to keep all manner of
proportions between themselves in the whole?  Who is it that has
regulated the outward form by which all those bodies are to be
stinted?  In a word, who is it that has found all the combinations
wherein matter thinks, and without the least of which matter must
immediately cease to think?  If you say it is chance, I answer that
you make chance rational to such a degree as to be the source of
reason itself.  Strange prejudice and intoxication of some men, not
to acknowledge a most intelligent cause, from which we derive all
intelligence; and rather choose to affirm that the purest reason is
but the effect of the blindest of all causes in such a subject as
matter, which of itself is altogether incapable of knowledge!
Certainly there is nothing a man of sense would not admit rather
than so extravagant and absurd an opinion.


SECT.  XXIX.  Sentiments of some of the Ancients concerning the Soul
and Knowledge of Beasts.


The philosophy of the ancients, though very lame and imperfect, had
nevertheless a glimpse of this difficulty; and, therefore, in order
to remove it, some of them pretended that the Divine Spirit
interspersed and scattered throughout the universe is a superior
Wisdom that continually operates in all nature, especially in
animals, just as souls act in bodies; and that this continual
impression or impulse of the Divine Spirit, which the vulgar call
instinct, without knowing the true signification of that word, was
the life of all living creatures.  They added, "That those sparks of
the Divine Spirit were the principle of all generations; that
animals received them in their conception and at their birth; and
that the moment they died those divine particles disengaged
themselves from all terrestrial matter in order to fly up to heaven,
where they shone and rolled among the stars.  It is this philosophy,
at once so magnificent and so fabulous, which Virgil so gracefully
expresses in the following verses upon bees:--

"Esse apibus partem divinae mentis, et haustus
AEtherios dixere:  Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, caelumque profundum.
Hinc pecudes, armenta viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas.
Scilicet huc reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia, nec morti esse locum, sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum, atque alto succedere caelo."

That is:--

"Induced by such examples, some have taught
That bees have portions of ethereal thought,
Endued with particles of heavenly fires,
For God the whole created mass inspires.
Through heaven, and earth, and ocean depth He throws
His influence round, and kindles as He goes.
Hence flocks, and herds, and men, and beasts, and fowls,
With breath are quickened, and attract their souls.
Hence take the forms His prescience did ordain,
And into Him, at length, resolve again.
No room is left for death:  they mount the sky,
And to their own congenial planets fly."

Dryden's "Virgil."

That Divine Wisdom that moves all the known parts of the world had
made so deep an impression upon the Stoics, and on Plato before
them, that they believed the whole world to be an animal, but a
rational and wise animal--in short, the Supreme God.  This
philosophy reduced Polytheism, or the multitude of gods, to Deism,
or one God, and that one God to Nature, which according to them was
eternal, infallible, intelligent, omnipotent, and divine.  Thus
philosophers, by striving to keep from and rectify the notions of
poets, dwindled again at last into poetical fancies, since they
assigned, as the inventors of fables did, a life, an intelligence,
an art, and a design to all the parts of the universe that appear
most inanimate.  Undoubtedly they were sensible of the wonderful art
that is conspicuous in nature, and their only mistake lay in
ascribing to the work the skill of the Artificer.


SECT.  XXX.  Of Man.


Let us not stop any longer with animals inferior to man.  It is high
time to consider and study the nature of man himself, in order to
discover Him whose image he is said to bear.  I know but two sorts
of beings in all nature:  those that are endowed with knowledge or
reason, and those that are not Now man is a compound of these two
modes of being.  He has a body, as the most inanimate corporeal
beings have; and he has a spirit, a mind, or a soul--that is, a
thought whereby he knows himself, and perceives what is about him.
If it be true that there is a First Being who has drawn or created
all the rest from nothing, man is truly His image; for he has, like
Him, in his nature all the real perfection that is to be found in
those two various kinds or modes of being.  But an image is but an
image still, and can be but an adumbration or shadow of the true
Perfect Being.

Let us begin to study man by the contemplation of his body.  "I know
not," said a mother to her children in the Holy Writ, "how you were
formed in my womb."  Nor is it, indeed, the wisdom of the parents
that forms so compounded and so regular a work.  They have no share
in that wonderful art; let us therefore leave them, and trace it up
higher.


SECT.  XXXI.  Of the Structure of Man's Body.


The body is made of clay; but let us admire the Hand that framed and
polished it.  The Artificer's Seal is stamped upon His work.  He
seems to have delighted in making a masterpiece with so vile a
matter.  Let us cast our eyes upon that body, in which the bones
sustain the flesh that covers them.  The nerves that are extended in
it make up all its strength; and the muscles with which the sinews
weave themselves, either by swelling or extending themselves,
perform the most exact and regular motions.  The bones are divided
at certain distances, but they have joints, whereby they are set one
within another, and are tied by nerves and tendons.  Cicero admires,
with reason, the excellent art with which the bones are knit
together.  For what is more supple for all various motions?  And, on
the other hand, what is more firm and durable?  Even after a body is
dead, and its parts are separated by corruption, we find that these
joints and ligaments can hardly be destroyed.  Thus this human
machine or frame is either straight or crooked, stiff or supple, as
we please.  From the brain, which is the source of all the nerves,
spring the spirits, which are so subtle that they escape the sight;
and nevertheless so real, and of so great activity and force, that
they perform all the motions of the machine, and make up all in
strength.  These spirits are in an instant conveyed to the very
extremities of the members.  Sometimes they flow gently and
regularly, sometimes they move with impetuosity, as occasion
requires; and they vary ad infinitum the postures, gestures, and
other actions of the body.


SECT.  XXXII.  Of the Skin.


Let us consider the flesh.  It is covered in certain places with a
soft and tender skin, for the ornament of the body.  If that skin,
that renders the object so agreeable, and gives it so sweet a
colour, were taken off, the same object would become ghastly, and
create horror.  In other places that same skin is harder and
thicker, in order to resist the fatigue of those parts.  As, for
instance, how harder is the skin of the feet than that of the face?
And that of the hinder part of the head than that of the forehead?
That skin is all over full of holes like a sieve:  but those holes,
which are called pores, are imperceptible.  Although sweat and other
transpirations exhale through those pores, the blood never runs out
that way.  That skin has all the tenderness necessary to make it
transparent, and give the face a lively, sweet, and graceful colour.
If the skin were less close, and less smooth, the face would look
bloody, and excoriated.  Now, who is that knew how to temper and mix
those colours with such nicety as to make a carnation which painters
admire, but never can perfectly imitate?


SECT.  XXXIII.  Of Veins and Arteries.


There are in man's body numberless branches of blood-vessels.  Some
of them carry the blood from the centre to the extreme parts, and
are called arteries.  Through those various vessels runs the blood,
a liquor soft and oily, and by this oiliness proper to retain the
most subtle spirits, just as the most subtle and spirituous essences
are preserved in gummy bodies.  This blood moistens the flesh, as
springs and rivers water the earth; and after it has filtrated in
the flesh, it returns to its source, more slowly, and less full of
spirits:  but it renews, and is again subtilised in that source, in
order to circulate without ceasing.


SECT.  XXXIV.  Of the Bones, and their Jointing.


Do you consider that excellent order and proportion of the limbs?
The legs and thighs are great bones jointed one with another, and
knit together by tendons.  They are two sorts of pillars, equal and
regular, erected to support the whole fabric.  But those pillars
fold; and the rotula of the knee is a bone of a circular figure,
which is placed on purpose on the joint, in order to fill it up, and
preserve it, when the bones fold, for the bending of the knee.  Each
column or pillar has its pedestal, which is composed of various
inlaid parts, so well jointed together, that they can either bend,
or keep stiff, as occasion requires.  The pedestal, I mean the foot,
turns, at a man's pleasure, under the pillar.  In this foot we find
nothing but nerves, tendons, and little bones closely knit, that
this part may, at once, be either more supple or more firm,
according to various occasions.  Even the toes, with their articles
and nails, serve to feel the ground a man walks on, to lean and
stand with more dexterity and nimbleness, the better to preserve the
equilibrium of the body, to rise, or to stoop.  The two feet stretch
forward, to keep the body from falling that way, when it stoops or
bends.  The two pillars are jointed together at the top, to bear up
the rest of the body, but are still divided there in such a manner,
that that joint affords man the conveniency of resting himself, by
sitting on the two biggest muscles of the body.

The body of the structure is proportioned to the height of the
pillars.  It contains such parts as are necessary for life, and
which consequently ought to be placed in the centre, and shut up in
the securest place.  Therefore two rows of ribs pretty close to one
another, that come out of the backbone, as the branches of a tree do
from its trunk, form a kind of hoop, to hide and shelter those noble
and tender parts.  But because the ribs could not entirely shut up
that centre of the human body, without hindering the dilatation of
the stomach and of the entrails, they form that hoop but to a
certain place, below which they leave an empty space, that the
inside may freely distend and stretch, both for respiration and
feeding.

As for the backbone, all the works of man afford nothing so artfully
and curiously wrought.  It would be too stiff, and too frangible or
brittle, if it were made of one single bone:  and in such a case man
could never bend or stoop.  The author of this machine has prevented
that inconveniency by forming vertebrae, which jointing one with
another make up a whole, consisting of several pieces of bones, more
strong than if it were of a single piece.  This compound being
sometimes supple and pliant, and sometimes stiff, stands either
upright, or bends, in a moment, as a man pleases.  All these
vertebrae have in the middle a gutter or channel, that serves to
convey a continuation of the substance of the brain to the
extremities of the body, and with speed to send thither spirits
through that pipe.

But who can forbear admiring the nature of the bones?  They are very
hard; and we see that even the corruption of all the rest of the
body, after death, does not affect them.  Nevertheless, they are
full of numberless holes and cavities that make them lighter; and in
the middle they are full of the marrow, or pith, that is to nourish
them.  They are bored exactly in those places through which the
ligaments that knit them are to pass.  Moreover, their extremities
are bigger than the middle, and form, as it were, two semicircular
heads, to make one bone turn more easily with another, that so the
whole may fold and bend without trouble.


SECT.  XXXV.  Of the Organs.


Within the enclosure of the ribs are placed in order all the great
organs such as serve to make a man breathe; such as digest the
aliments; and such as make new blood.  Respiration, or breathing, is
necessary to temper inward heat, occasioned by the boiling of the
blood, and by the impetuous course of the spirits.  The air is a
kind of food that nourishes the animal, and by means of which he
renews himself every moment of his life.  Nor is digestion less
necessary to prepare sensible aliments towards their being changed
into blood, which is a liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to
thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all
the members what they lose continually both by transpiration and the
waste of spirits.  The lungs are like great covers, which being
spongy, easily dilate and contract themselves, and as they
incessantly take in and blow out a great deal of air, they form a
kind of bellows that are in perpetual motion.  The stomach has a
dissolvent that causes hunger, and puts man in mind of his want of
food.  That dissolvent, which stimulates and pricks the stomach,
does, by that very uneasiness, prepare for it a very lively
pleasure, when its craving is satisfied by the aliments.  Then man,
with delight, fills his belly with strange matter, which would
create horror in him if he could see it as soon as it has entered
his stomach, and which even displeases him, when he sees it being
already satisfied.  The stomach is made in the figure of a bagpipe.
There the aliments being dissolved by a quick coction, or digestion,
are all confounded, and make up a soft liquor, which afterwards
becomes a kind of milk, called chyle; and which being at last
brought into the heart, receives there, through the plenty of
spirits, the form, vivacity, and colour of blood.  But while the
purest juice of the aliments passes from the stomach into the pipes
destined for the preparation of chyle and blood, the gross particles
of the same aliments are separated, just as bran is from flour by a
sieve; and they are dejected downwards to ease the body of them,
through the most hidden passages, and the most remote from the
organs of the senses, lest these be offended at them.  Thus the
wonders of this machine are so great and numerous, that we find some
unfathomable, even in the most abject and mortifying functions of
the body, which modesty will not allow to be more particularly
explained.


SECT.  XXXVI.  Of the Inward Parts.


I own that the inward parts are not so agreeable to the sight as the
outward; but then be pleased to observe they are not made to be
seen.  Nay, it was necessary according to art and design that they
should not be discovered without horror, and that a man should not
without violent reluctance go about to discover them by cutting open
this machine in another man.  It is this very horror that prepares
compassion and humanity in the hearts of men when one sees another
wounded or hurt.  Add to this, with St. Austin, that there are in
those inward parts a proportion, order, and mechanism which still
please more an attentive, inquisitive mind than external beauty can
please the eyes of the body.  That inside of man--which is at once
so ghastly and horrid and so wonderful and admirable--is exactly as
it should be to denote dirt and clay wrought by a Divine hand, for
we find in it both the frailty of the creature and the art of the
Creator.


SECT.  XXXVII.  Of the Arms and their Use.


From the top of that precious fabric we have described hang the two
arms, which are terminated by the hands, and which bear a perfect
symmetry one with another.  The arms are knit with the shoulders in
such a manner that they have a free motion, in that joint.  They are
besides divided at the elbow and at the wrist that they may fold,
bend, and turn with quickness.  The arms are of a just length to
reach all the parts of the body.  They are nervous and full of
muscles, that they may, as well as the back, be often in action and
sustain the greatest fatigue of all the body.  The hands are a
contexture of nerves and little bones set one within another in such
a manner that they have all the strength and suppleness necessary to
feel the neighbouring bodies, to seize on them, hold them fast,
throw them, draw them to one, push them off, disentangle them, and
untie them one from another.

The fingers, the ends of which are armed with nails, are by the
delicacy and variety of their motions contrived to exercise the most
curious and marvellous arts.  The arms and hands serve also,
according as they are either extended, folded, or turned, to poise
the body in such a manner as that it may stoop without any danger of
falling.  The whole machine has, besides, independently from all
after-thoughts, a kind of spring that poises it on a sudden and
makes it find the equilibrium in all its different postures and
positions.


SECT.  XXXVIII.  Of the Neck and Head.


Above the body rises the neck, which is either firm or flexible at
pleasure.  Must a man bear a heavy burden on his head?  This neck
becomes as stiff as if it were made up of one single bone.  Has he a
mind to bow or turn his head?  The neck bends every way as if all
its bones were disjointed.  This neck, a little raised above the
shoulders, bears up with ease the head, which over-rules and governs
the whole body.  If it were less big it would bear no proportion
with the rest of the machine; and if it were bigger it would not
only be disproportioned and deformed, but, besides, its weight would
both crush the neck and put man in danger of falling on the side it
should lean a little too much.  This head, fortified on all sides by
very thick and very hard bones in order the better to preserve the
precious treasure it encloses, is jointed with the vertebrae of the
neck, and has a very quick communication with all the other parts of
the body.  It contains the brain, whose moist, soft, and spongy
substance is made up of tender filaments or threads woven together;
this is the centre of all the wonders we shall speak of afterwards.
The skull is regularly perforated, or bored, with exact proportion,
and symmetry, for, the two eyes, the two ears, the mouth, and the
nostrils.  There are nerves destined for sensations, that exercise
and play in most of those pipes.  The nose, which has no nerves for
its sensation, has a cribriform, or spongy bone, to let odours pass
on to the brain.  Amongst the organs of these sensations the chief
are double, to preserve to one side what the other might happen to
be defective in by any accident.  These two organs of the same
sensation are symmetrically placed either on the forepart or on the
sides, that man may use them with more ease to the right or to the
left or right against him--that is to say, towards the places his
joints direct his steps and all his actions.  Besides, the
flexibility of the neck makes all those organs turn in an instant
which way soever he pleases.  All the hinder part of the head, which
is the least able to defend itself, is therefore the thickest.  It
is adorned with hair which at the same time serves to fortify the
head against the injuries of the air; and, on the other hand, the
hair likewise adorns the fore part of the head and renders the face
more graceful.  The face is the fore part of the head, wherein the
principal sensations meet and centre with an order and proportion
that render it very beautiful unless some accident or other happen
to alter and impair so regular a piece of work.  The two eyes are
equal, being placed about the middle, on the two sides of the head,
that they may, without trouble, discover afar off both on the right
and left all strange objects, and that they may commodiously watch
for the safety of all the parts of the body.  The exact symmetry
with which they are placed is the ornament of the face; and He that
made them has kindled in them I know not what celestial flame, the
like of which all the rest of nature does not afford.  These eyes
are a sort of looking-glasses, wherein all the objects of the whole
world are painted by turns and without confusion in the bottom of
the retina that the thinking part of man may see them in those
looking-glasses.  But though we perceive all objects by a double
organ, yet we never see the objects double, because the two nerves
that are subservient to sight in our eyes are but two branches that
unite in one pipe, as the two glasses of a pair of spectacles unite
in the upper part that joins them together.  The two eyes are
adorned with two equal eyebrows, and, that they may open and close,
they are wrapped up with lids edged with hair that defend so
delicate a part.


SECT.  XXXIX.  Of the Forehead and Other Parts of the Face.


The forehead gives majesty and gracefulness to all the face, and
serves to heighten all its features.  Were it not for the nose,
which is placed in the middle, the whole face would look flat and
deformed, of which they are fully convinced who have happened to see
men in whom that part of the face is mutilated.  It is placed just
above the mouth, that it may the more easily discern, by the odours,
whatever is most proper to feed man.  The two nostrils serve at once
both for the respiration and smell.  Look upon the lips:  their
lively colour, freshness, figure, seat, and proportion, with the
other features, render the face most beautiful.  The mouth, by the
correspondence of its motions with those of the eyes, animates,
gladdens, suddens, softens, or troubles the face, and by sensible
marks expresses every passion.  The lips not only open to receive
food, but by their suppleness and the variety of their motions serve
likewise to vary the sounds that form speech.  When they open they
discover a double row of teeth with which the mouth is adorned.
These teeth are little bones set in order in the two jaw-bones,
which have a spring to open and another to shut in such a manner
that the teeth grind, like a mill, the aliments in order to prepare
their digestion.  But these aliments thus ground go down into the
stomach, through a pipe different from that through which we
breathe, and these two pipes, though so neighbouring, have nothing
common.


SECT.  XL.  Of the Tongue and Teeth.


The tongue is a contexture of small muscles and nerves so very
supple, that it winds and turns like a serpent, with unconceivable
mobility and pliantness.  It performs in the mouth the same office
which either the fingers or the bow of a master of music perform on
a musical instrument:  for sometimes it strikes the teeth, sometimes
the roof of the mouth.  There is a pipe that goes into the inside of
the neck, called throat, from the roof of the mouth to the breast,
which is made up of cartilaginous rings nicely set one within
another, and lined within with a very smooth membrane, in order to
render the air that is pushed from the lungs more sonorous.  On the
side of the roof of the mouth the end of that pipe is opened like a
flute, by a slit, that either extends, or contracts itself as is
necessary to render the voice either big or slender, hollow or
clear.  But lest the aliments, which have their separate pipe,
should slide into the windpipe I have been describing, there is a
kind of valve that lies on the orifice of the organ of the voice,
and playing like a drawbridge, lets the aliments freely pass through
their proper channel, but never suffers the least particle or drop
to fall into the slit of the windpipe.  This sort of valve has a
very free motion, and easily turns any way, so that by shaking on
that half-opened orifice, it performs the softest modulations of the
voice.  This instance is sufficient to show, by-the-by, and without
entering long-winded details of anatomy, what a marvellous art there
is in the frame of the inward parts.  And indeed the organ I have
described is the most perfect of all musical instruments, nor have
these any perfection, but so far as they imitate that.


SECT.  XLI.  Of the Smell, Taste, and Hearing.


Who were able to explain the niceness of the organs by which man
discerns the numberless savours and odours of bodies?  But how is it
possible for so many different voices to strike at once my ear
without confounding one another, and for those sounds to leave in
me, after they have ceased to be, so lively and so distinct images
of what they have been?  How careful was the Artificer who made our
bodies to give our eyes a moist, smooth, and sliding cover to close
them; and why did He leave our ears open?  Because, says Cicero, the
eyes must be shut against the light in order to sleep; and, in the
meantime, the ears ought to remain open in order to give us warning,
and wake us by the report of noise, when we are in danger of being
surprised.  Who is it that, in an instant, imprints in my eye the
heaven, the sea, and the earth, seated at almost an infinite
distance?  How can the faithful images of all the objects of the
universe, from the sun to an atom, range themselves distinctly in so
small an organ?  Is not the substance of the brain, which preserves,
in order, such lively representations of all the objects that have
made an impression upon us ever since we were in the world, a most
wonderful prodigy?  Men admire with reason the invention of books,
wherein the history of so many events, and the collection of so many
thoughts, are preserved.  But what comparison can be made between
the best book and the brain of a learned man?  There is no doubt but
such a brain is a collection infinitely more precious, and of a far
more excellent contrivance, than a book.  It is in that small
repository that a man never misses finding the images he has
occasion for.  He calls them, and they come; he dismisses them, and
they sink I know not where, and disappear, to make room for others.
A man shuts or opens his fancy at pleasure, like a book.  He turns,
as it were, its leaves; and, in an instant, goes from one end to the
other.  There is even in memory a sort of table, like the index of a
book, which shows where certain remote images are to be found.  We
do not find that these innumerable characters, which the mind of man
reads inwardly with so much rapidity, leave any distinct trace or
print in the brain, when we open it.  That admirable book is but a
soft substance, or a sort of bottom made up of tender threads, woven
one with another.  Now what skilful hand has laid up in that kind of
dirt, which appears so shapeless, such precious images, ranged with
such excellent and curious art?


SECT.  XLII.  Of the Proportion of Man's Body.


Such is the body of man in general:  for I do not enter into an
anatomical detail, my design being only to discover the art that is
conspicuous in nature, by the simple cast of an eye, without any
science.  The body of man might undoubtedly be either much bigger
and taller, or much lesser and smaller.  But if, for instance, it
were but one foot high, it would be insulted by most animals, that
would tread and crush it under their feet.  If it were as tall as a
high steeple, a small number of men would in a few days consume all
the aliments a whole country affords.  They could find neither
horses nor any other beasts of burden either to carry them on their
backs or draw them in a machine with wheels; nor could they find
sufficient quantity of materials to build houses proportioned to
their bigness; and as there could be but a small number of men upon
earth, so they should want most conveniences.  Now, who is it that
has so well regulated the size of man to so just a standard?  Who is
it that has fixed that of other animals and living creatures, with
proportion to that of man?  Of all animals, man only stands upright
on his feet, which gives him a nobleness and majesty that
distinguishes him, even as to the outside, from all that lives upon
earth.  Not only his figure is the noblest, but he is also the
strongest and most dextrous of all animals, in proportion to his
bigness.  Let one nicely examine the bulk and weight of the most
terrible beasts, and he will find, that though they have more matter
than the body of a man, yet a vigorous man has more strength of body
than most wild beasts.  Nor are these dreadful to him, except in
their teeth and claws.  But man, who has not such natural arms in
his limbs, has yet hands, whose dexterity to make artificial weapons
surpasses all that nature has bestowed upon beasts.  Thus man either
pierces with his darts or draws into his snares, masters, and leads
in chains the strongest and fiercest animals.  Nay, he has the skill
to tame them in their captivity, and to sport with them as he
pleases.  He teaches lions and tigers to caress him:  and gets on
the back of elephants.


SECT.  XLIII.  Of the Soul, which alone, among all Creatures, Thinks
and Knows.


But the body of man, which appears to be the masterpiece of nature,
is not to be compared to his thought.  It is certain that there are
bodies that do not think:  man, for instance, ascribes no knowledge
to stone, wood, or metals, which undoubtedly are bodies.  Nay, it is
so natural to believe that matter cannot think, that all
unprejudiced men cannot forbear laughing when they hear any one
assert that beasts are but mere machines; because they cannot
conceive that mere machines can have such knowledge as they pretend
to perceive in beasts.  They think it to be like children's playing,
and talking to their puppets, the ascribing any knowledge to mere
machines.  Hence it is that the ancients themselves, who knew no
real substance but the body, pretended, however, that the soul of a
man was a fifth element, or a sort of quintessence without name,
unknown here below, indivisible, immutable, and altogether celestial
and divine, because they could not conceive that the terrestrial
matter of the four elements could think, and know itself:
Aristoteles quintam quandam naturam censet esse, e qua sit mens.
Cogitare enim, et providere, et discere, et docere. . . . in horum
quatuor generum nullo inesse putat; quintum genus adhibet vacans
nomine.


SECT.  XLIV.  Matter Cannot Think.


But let us suppose whatever you please, for I will not enter the
lists with any sect of philosophers:  here is an alternative which
no philosopher can avoid.  Either matter can become a thinking
substance, without adding anything to it, or matter cannot think at
all, and so what thinks in us is a substance distinct from matter,
and which is united to it.  If matter can acquire the faculty of
thinking without adding anything to it, it must, at least, be owned
that all matter does not think, and that even some matter that now
thinks did not think fifty years ago; as, for instance, the matter
of which the body of a young man is made up did not think ten years
before he was born.  It must then be concluded that matter can
acquire the faculty of thinking by a certain configuration, ranging,
and motion of its parts.  Let us, for instance, suppose the matter
of a stone, or of a heap of sand.  It is agreed this part of matter
has no manner of thought; and therefore to make it begin to think,
all its parts must be configurated, ranged, and moved a certain way
and to a certain degree.  Now, who is it that knew how to find, with
so much niceness, that proportion, order, and motion that way, and
to such a degree, above and below which matter would never think?
Who is it that has given all those just, exact, and precise
modifications to a vile and shapeless matter, in order to form the
body of a child, and to render it rational by degrees?  If, on the
contrary, it be affirmed that matter cannot become a thinking
substance without adding something to it, and that another being
must be united to it, I ask, what will that other thinking being be,
whilst the matter, to which it is united, only moves?  Therefore,
here are two natures or substances very unlike and distinct.  We
know one by figures and local motions only; as we do the other by
perceptions and reasonings.  The one does not imply, or create the
idea of the other, for their respective ideas have nothing in
common.


SECT.  XLV.  Of the Union of the Soul and Body, of which God alone
can be the Author.


But now, how comes it to pass that beings so unlike are so
intimately united together in man?  Whence comes it that certain
motions of the body so suddenly and so infallibly raise certain
thoughts in the soul?  Whence comes it that the thoughts of the
soul, so suddenly and so infallibly, occasion certain motions in the
body?  Whence proceeds so regular a society, for seventy or
fourscore years, without any interruption?  How comes it to pass
that this union of two beings, and two operations, so very
different, make up so exact a compound, that many are tempted to
believe it to be a simple and indivisible whole?  What hand had the
skill to unite and tie together these two extremes and opposites?
It is certain they did not unite themselves by mutual consent, for
matter having of itself neither thought nor will, to make terms and
conditions, it could not enter into an agreement with the mind.  On
the other hand, the mind does not remember that it ever made an
agreement with matter; nor could it be subjected to such an
agreement, if it had quite forgot it.  If the mind had freely, and
of its own accord, resolved to submit to the impressions of matter,
it would not, however, subject itself to them but when it should
remember such a resolution, which, besides, it might alter at
pleasure.  Nevertheless, it is certain that in spite of itself it is
dependent on the body, and that it cannot free itself from its
dependence, unless it destroy the organs of the body by a violent
death.  Besides, although the mind had voluntarily subjected itself
to matter, it would not follow that matter were reciprocally
subjected to the mind.  The mind would indeed have certain thoughts
when the body should have certain motions, but the body would not be
determined to have, in its turn, certain motions, as soon as the
mind should have certain thoughts.  Now it is most certain that this
dependence is reciprocal.  Nothing is more absolute than the command
of the mind over the body.  The mind wills, and, instantly, all the
members of the body are in motion, as if they were acted by the most
powerful machines.  On the other hand, nothing is more manifest than
the power and influence of the body over the mind.  The body is in
motion, and, instantly the mind is forced to think either with
pleasure or pain, upon certain objects.  Now, what hand equally
powerful over these two divers and distinct natures has been able to
bring them both under the same yoke, and hold them captive in so
exact and inviolable a society?  Will any man say it was chance?  If
he does, will he be able either to understand what he means, or to
make it understood by others?  Has chance, by a concourse of atoms,
hooked together the parts of the body with the mind?  If the mind
can be hooked with some parts of the body, it must have parts
itself, and consequently be a perfect body, in which case, we
relapse into the first answer, which I have already confuted.  If,
on the contrary, the mind has no parts, nothing can hook it with
those of the body, nor has chance wherewithal to tie them together.

In short, my alternative ever returns, and is peremptory and
decisive.  If the mind and body are a whole made up of matter only,
how comes it to pass that this matter, which yesterday did not, has
this day begun to think?  Who is it that has bestowed upon it what
it had not, and which is without comparison more noble than
thoughtless matter?  What bestows thought upon it, has it not
itself, and how can it give what it has not?  Let us even suppose
that thought should result from a certain configuration, ranging,
and degree of motion a certain way, of all the parts of matter:
what artificer has had the skill to find out all those just, nice,
and exact combinations, in order to make a thinking machine?  If, on
the contrary, the mind and body are two distinct natures, what power
superior to those two natures has been able to unite and tie
together without the mind's assent, or so much as its knowing which
way that union was made?  Who is it that with such absolute and
supreme command over-rules both minds and bodies, and keeps them in
society and correspondence, and under a sort of incomprehensible
policy?


SECT.  XLVI.  The Soul has an Absolute Command over the Body.


Be pleased to observe that the command of my mind over my body is
supreme and absolute in its bounded extent, since my single will,
without any effort or preparation, causes all the members of my body
to move on a sudden and immediately, according to the rules of
mechanics.  As the Scripture gives us the character of God, who said
after the creation of the universe, "Let there be light, and there
was light"--in like manner, the inward word of my soul alone,
without any effort or preparation, makes what it says.  I say, for
instance, within myself, through that inward, simple, and
momentaneous word, "Let my body move, and it moves."  At the command
of that simple and intimate will, all the parts of my body are at
work.  Immediately all nerves are distended, all the springs hasten
to concur together, and the whole machine obeys, just as if every
one of the most secret of those organs heard a supreme and
omnipotent voice.  This is certainly the most simple and most
effectual power that can be conceived.  All the other beings within
our knowledge afford not the like instance of it, and this is
precisely what men that are sensible and persuaded of a Deity
ascribe to it in all the universe.

Shall I ascribe it to my feeble mind, or rather to the power it has
over my body, which is so vastly different from it?  Shall I believe
that my will has that supreme command of its own nature, though in
itself so weak and imperfect?  But how comes it to pass that, among
so many bodies, it has that power over no more than one?  For no
other body moves according to its desires.  Now, who is it that gave
over one body the power it had over no other?  Will any man be again
so bold as to ascribe this to chance?


SECT.  XLVII.  The Power of the Soul over the Body is not only
Supreme or Absolute, but Blind at the same time.


But that power, which is so supreme and absolute, is blind at the
same time.  The most simple and ignorant peasant knows how to move
his body as well as a philosopher the most skilled in anatomy.  The
mind of a peasant commands his nerves, muscles, and tendons, which
he knows not, and which he never heard of.  He finds them without
knowing how to distinguish them, or knowing where they lie; he calls
precisely upon such as he has occasion for, nor does he mistake one
for the other.  If a rope-dancer, for instance, does but will, the
spirits instantly run with impetuousness, sometimes to certain
nerves, sometimes to others--all which distend or slacken in due
time.  Ask him which of them he set a-going, and which way he begun
to move them?  He will not so much as understand what you mean.  He
is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward
springs of his machine.  The lute-player, who is perfectly well
acquainted with all the strings of his instrument, who sees them
with his eyes, and touches them one after another with his fingers,
yet mistakes them sometimes.  But the soul that governs the machine
of man's body moves all its springs in time, without seeing or
discerning them, without being acquainted with their figure,
situation, or strength, and yet it never mistakes.  What prodigy is
here!  My mind commands what it knows not, and cannot see; what
neither has, nor is capable of any knowledge.  And yet it is
infallibly obeyed.  How much blindness and how much power at once is
here!  The blindness is man's; but the power, whose is it?  To whom
shall we ascribe it, unless it be to Him who sees what man does not
see, and performs in him what passes his understanding?  It is to no
purpose my mind is willing to move the bodies that surround it, and
which it knows very distinctly; for none of them stirs, and it has
not power to move the least atom by its will.  There is but one
single body, which some superior Power must have made its property.
With respect to this body, my mind is but willing, and all the
springs of that machine, which are unknown to it, move in time and
in concert to obey him.  St. Augustin, who made these reflections,
has expressed them excellently well.  "The inward parts of our
bodies," says he, "cannot be living but by our souls; but our souls
animate them far more easily than they can know them. . . .  The
soul knows not the body which is subject to it. . . .  It does not
know why it does not move the nerves but when it pleases; and why,
on the contrary, the pulsation of veins goes on without
interruption, whether the mind will or no.  It knows not which is
the first part of the body it moves immediately, in order thereby to
move all the rest. . . .  It does not know why it feels in spite of
itself, and moves the members only when it pleases.  It is the mind
does these things in the body.  But how comes it to pass it neither
knows what she does, nor in what manner it performs it?  Those who
learn, anatomy," continues that father, "are taught by others what
passes within, and is performed by themselves.  Why," says he, "do I
know, without being taught, that there is in the sky, at a
prodigious distance from me, a sun and stars; and why have I
occasion for a master to learn where motion begins? . . .  When I
move my finger, I know not how what I perform within myself is
performed.  We are too far above, and cannot comprehend ourselves."


SECT.  XLVIII.  The Sovereignty of the Soul over the Body
principally appears in the Images imprinted in the Brain.


It is certain we cannot sufficiently admire either the absolute
power of the soul over corporeal organs which she knows not, or the
continual use it makes of them without discerning them.  That
sovereignty principally appears with respect to the images imprinted
in our brain.  I know all the bodies of the universe that have made
any impression on my senses for a great many years past.  I have
distinct images of them that represent them to me, insomuch that I
believe I see them even when they exist no more.  My brain is like a
closet full of pictures, which should move and set themselves in
order at the master's pleasure.  Painters, with all their art and
skill, never attain but an imperfect likeness; whereas the pictures
I have in my head are so faithful, that it is by consulting them I
perceive all the defects of those made by painters, and correct them
within myself.  Now, do these images, more like their original than
the masterpieces of the art of painting, imprint themselves in my
head without any art?  Is my brain a book, all the characters of
which have ranged themselves of their own accord?  If there be any
art in the case, it does not proceed from me.  For I find within me
that collection of images without having ever so much as thought
either to imprint them, or set them in order.  Moreover, all these
images either appear or retire as I please, without any confusion.
I call them back, and they return; I dismiss them, and they sink I
know not where.  They either assemble or separate, as I please.  But
I neither know where they lie, nor what they are.  Nevertheless I
find them always ready.  The agitation of so many images, old and
new, that revive, join, or separate, never disturbs a certain order
that is amongst them.  If some of them do not appear at the first
summons, at least I am certain they are not far off.  They may lurk
in some deep corner, but I am not totally ignorant of them as I am
of things I never knew; for, on the contrary, I know confusedly what
I look for.  If any other image offers itself in the room of that I
called for, I immediately dismiss it, telling it, "It is not you I
have occasion for."  But, then, where lie objects half-forgotten?
They are present within me, since I look for them there, and find
them at last.  Again, in what manner are they there, since I look
for them a long while in vain?  What becomes of them?  "I am no
more," says St. Augustin, "what I was when I had the thoughts I
cannot find again.  I know not," continues that father, "either how
it comes to pass that I am thus withdrawn from and deprived of
myself, or how I am afterwards brought back and restored to myself.
I am, as it were, another man, and carried to another place, when I
look for, and do not find, what I had trusted to my memory.  In such
a case we cannot reach, and are, in a manner, strangers remote from
ourselves.  Nor do we come at us but when we find what we are in
quest of.  But where is it we look for but within us?  Or what is it
we look for but ourselves? . . .  So unfathomable a difficulty
astonishes us!"  I distinctly remember I have known what I do not
know at present.  I remember my very oblivion.  I call to mind the
pictures or images of every person in every period of life wherein I
have seen them formerly, so that the same person passes several
times in my head.  At first, I see one a child, then a young, and
afterwards an old, man.  I place wrinkles in the same face in which,
on the other side, I see the tender graces of infancy.  I join what
subsists no more with what is still, without confounding these
extremes.  I preserve I know not what, which, by turns, is all that
I have seen since I came into the world.  Out of this unknown store
come all the perfumes, harmonies, tastes, degrees, and mixtures of
colours; in short, all the figures that have passed through my
senses, and which they have trusted to my brain.  I revive when I
please the joy I felt thirty years ago.  It returns; but sometimes
it is not the same it was formerly, and appears without rejoicing
me.  I remember I have been well pleased, and yet am not so while I
have that remembrance.  On the other hand, I renew past sorrows and
troubles.  They are present; for I distinctly perceive them such as
they were formerly, and not the least part of their bitterness and
lively sense escapes my memory.  But yet they are no more the same;
they are dulled, and neither trouble nor disquiet me.  I perceive
all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only
by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into
a kind of sport and diversion, for the image of past sorrows
rejoices me.  It is the same with pleasures:  a virtuous mind is
afflicted by the memory of its disorderly unlawful enjoyments.  They
are present, for they appear with all their softest and most
flattering attendants; but they are no more themselves, and such
joys return only to make us uneasy.


SECT.  XLIX.  Two Wonders of the Memory and Brain.


Here, therefore, are two wonders equally incomprehensible.  The
first, that my brain is a kind of book, that contains a number
almost infinite of images, and characters ranged in an order I did
not contrive, and of which chance could not be the author.  For I
never had the least thought either of writing anything in my brain,
or to place in any order the images and characters I imprinted in
it.  I had no other thought but only to see the objects that struck
my senses.  Neither could chance make so marvellous a book:  even
all the art of man is too imperfect ever to reach so high a
perfection, therefore what hand had the skill to compose it?

The second wonder I find in my brain, is to see that my mind reads
with so much ease, whatever it pleases, in that inward book; and
read even characters it does not know.  I never saw the traces or
figures imprinted in my brain, and even the substance of my brain
itself, which is like the paper of that book, is altogether unknown
to me.  All those numberless characters transpose themselves, and
afterwards resume their rank and place to obey my command.  I have,
as it were, a divine power over a work I am unacquainted with, and
which is incapable of knowledge.  That which understands nothing,
understands my thought and performs it instantly.  The thought of
man has no power over bodies:  I am sensible of it by running over
all nature.  There is but one single body which my bare will moves,
as if it were a deity; and even moves the most subtle and nicest
springs of it, without knowing them.  Now, who is it that united my
will to this body, and gave it so much power over it?


SECT.  L.  The Mind of Man is mixed with Greatness and Weakness.
Its Greatness consists in two things.  First, the Mind has the Idea
of the Infinite.


Let us conclude these observations by a short reflection on the
essence of our mind; in which I find an incomprehensible mixture of
greatness and weakness.  Its greatness is real:  for it brings
together the past and the present, without confusion; and by its
reasoning penetrates into futurity.  It has the idea both of bodies
and spirits.  Nay, it has the idea of the infinite:  for it supposes
and affirms all that belongs to it, and rejects and denies all that
is not proper to it.  If you say that the infinite is triangular,
the mind will answer without hesitation, that what has no bounds can
have no figure.  If you desire it to assign the first of the units
that make up an infinite number, it will readily answer, that there
can be no beginning, end, or number in the infinite; because if one
could find either a first or last unit in it, one might add some
other unit to that, and consequently increase the number.  Now a
number cannot be infinite, when it is capable of some addition, and
when a limit may be assigned to it, on the side where it may receive
an increase.


SECT.  LI.  The Mind knows the Finite only by the Idea of the
Infinite.


It is even in the infinite that my mind knows the finite.  When we
say a man is sick, we mean a man that has no health; and when we
call a man weak, we mean one that has no strength.  We know
sickness, which is a privation of health, no other way but by
representing to us health itself as a real good, of which such a man
is deprived; and, in like manner, we only know weakness, by
representing to us strength as a real advantage, which such a man is
not master of.  We know darkness, which is nothing real, only by
denying, and consequently by conceiving daylight, which is most
real, and most positive.  In like manner we know the finite only by
assigning it a bound, which is a mere negation of a greater extent;
and consequently only the privation of the infinite.  Now a man
could never represent to himself the privation of the infinite,
unless he conceived the infinite itself:  just as he could not have
a notion of sickness, unless he had an idea of health, of which it
is only a privation.  Now, whence comes that idea of the infinite in
us?


SECT.  LII.  Secondly, the Ideas of the Mind are Universal, Eternal,
and Immutable.


Oh! how great is the mind of man!  He carries within him wherewithal
to astonish, and infinitely to surpass himself:  since his ideas are
universal, eternal, and immutable.  They are universal:  for when I
say it is impossible to be and not to be; the whole is bigger than a
part of it; a line perfectly circular has no straight parts; between
two points given the straight line is the shortest; the centre of a
perfect circle is equally distant from all the points of the
circumference; an equilateral triangle has no obtuse or right angle:
all these truths admit of no exception.  There never can be any
being, line, circle, or triangle, but according to these rules.
These axioms are of all times, or to speak more properly, they exist
before all time, and will ever remain after any comprehensible
duration.  Let the universe be turned topsy-turvy, destroyed, and
annihilated; and even let there be no mind to reason about beings,
lines, circles, and triangles:  yet it will ever be equally true in
itself, that the same thing cannot at once be and not be; that a
perfect circle can have no part of a straight line; that the centre
of a perfect circle cannot be nearer one side of the circumference
than the other.  Men may, indeed, not think actually on these
truths:  and it might even happen that there should be neither
universe nor any mind capable to reflect on these truths:  but
nevertheless they are still constant and certain in themselves
although no mind should be acquainted with them; just as the rays of
the sun would not cease being real, although all men should be
blind, and no body have eyes to be sensible of their light.  By
affirming that two and two make four, says St. Augustin, man is not
only certain that he speaks truth, but he cannot doubt that such a
proposition was ever equally true, and must be so eternally.  These
ideas we carry within ourselves have no bounds, and cannot admit of
any.  It cannot be said that what I have affirmed about the centre
of perfect circles is true only in relation to a certain number of
circles; for that proposition is true, through evident necessity,
with respect to all circles ad infinitum.  These unbounded ideas can
never be changed, altered, impaired, or defaced in us; for they make
up the very essence of our reason.  Whatever effort a man may make
in his own mind, yet it is impossible for him ever to entertain a
serious doubt about the truths which those ideas clearly represent
to us.  For instance, I never can seriously call in question,
whether the whole is bigger than one of its parts; or whether the
centre of a perfect circle is equally distant from all the points of
the circumference.  The idea of the infinite is in me like that of
numbers, lines, circles, a whole, and a part.  The changing our
ideas would be, in effect, the annihilating reason itself.  Let us
judge and make an estimate of our greatness by the immutable
infinite stamp within us, and which can never be defaced from our
minds.  But lest such a real greatness should dazzle and betray us,
by flattering our vanity, let us hasten to cast our eyes on our
weakness.


SECT.  LIII.  Weakness of Man's Mind.


That same mind that incessantly sees the infinite, and, through the
rule of the infinite, all finite things, is likewise infinitely
ignorant of all the objects that surround it.  It is altogether
ignorant of itself, and gropes about in an abyss of darkness.  It
neither knows what it is, nor how it is united with a body; nor
which way it has so much command over all the springs of that body,
which it knows not.  It is ignorant of its own thoughts and wills.
It knows not, with certainty, either what it believes or wills.  It
often fancies to believe and will, what it neither believes nor
wills.  It is liable to mistake, and its greatest excellence is to
acknowledge it.  To the error of its thoughts, it adds the disorder
and irregularity of its will and desires; so that it is forced to
groan in the consciousness and experience of its corruption.  Such
is the mind of man, weak, uncertain, stinted, full of errors.  Now,
who is it that put the idea of the infinite, that is to say of
perfection, in a subject so stinted and so full of imperfection?
Did it give itself so sublime, and so pure an idea, which is itself
a kind of infinite in imagery?  What finite being distinct from it
was able to give it what bears no proportion with what is limited
within any bounds?  Let us suppose the mind of man to be like a
looking-glass, wherein the images of all the neighbouring bodies
imprint themselves.  Now what being was able to stamp within us the
image of the infinite, if the infinite never existed?  Who can put
in a looking-glass the image of a chimerical object which is not in
being, and which was never placed against the glass?  This image of
the infinite is not a confused collection of finite objects, which
the mind may mistake for a true infinite.  It is the true infinite
of which we have the thought and idea.  We know it so well, that we
exactly distinguish it from whatever it is not; and that no subtilty
can palm upon us any other object in its room.  We are so well
acquainted with it, that we reject from it any propriety that
denotes the least bound or limit.  In short, we know it so well,
that it is in it alone we know all the rest, just as we know the
night by the day, sickness by health.  Now, once more, whence comes
so great an image?  Does it proceed from nothing?  Can a stinted
limited being imagine and invent the infinite, if there be no
infinite at all?  Our weak and short-sighted mind cannot of itself
form that image, which, at this rate, should have no author.  None
of the outward objects can give us that image:  for they can only
give us the image of what they are, and they are limited and
imperfect.  Therefore, from whence shall we derive that distinct
image which is unlike anything within us, and all we know here
below, without us?  Whence does it proceed?  Where is that infinite
we cannot comprehend, because it is really infinite:  and which
nevertheless we cannot mistake, because we distinguish it from
anything that is inferior to it?  Sure it must be somewhere,
otherwise how could it imprint itself in our minds?


SECT.  LIV.  The Ideas of Man are the Immutable Rules of his
Judgment.


But besides the idea of the infinite, I have yet universal and
immutable notions, which are the rule and standard of all my
judgments; insomuch that I cannot judge of anything but by
consulting them; nor am I free to judge contrary to what they
represent to me.  My thoughts are so far from being able to correct
or form that rule, that they are themselves corrected, in spite of
myself, by that superior rule; and invincibly subjected to its
decision.  Whatever effort my mind can make, I can never be brought,
as I observed before, to entertain a doubt whether two and two make
four; whether the whole is bigger than one of its parts; or whether
the centre of a perfect circle be equally distant from all the
points of the circumference.  I am not free to deny those
propositions; and if I happen to deny those truths, or others much
like them, there is in me something above myself, which forces me to
return to the rule.  That fixed and immutable rule is so inward and
intimate, that I am tempted to take it for myself.  But it is above
me, since it corrects and rectifies me; gives me a distrust of
myself, and makes me sensible of my impotency.  It is something that
inspires me every moment, provided I hearken to it, and I never err
or mistake except when I am not attentive to it.  What inspires me
would for ever preserve me from error, if I were docile, and acted
without precipitation; for that inward inspiration would teach me to
judge aright of things within my reach, and about which I have
occasion to form a judgment.  As for others, it would teach me not
to judge of them at all, which second lesson is no less important
than the first.  That inward rule is what I call my reason; but I
speak of my reason without penetrating into the extent of those
words, as I speak of nature and instinct, without knowing what those
expressions mean.


SECT.  LV.  What Man's Reason is.


It is certain my reason is within me, for I must continually
recollect myself to find it; but the superior reason that corrects
me upon occasion, and which I consult, is none of mine, nor is it
part of myself.  That rule is perfect and immutable; whereas I am
changeable and imperfect.  When I err, it preserves its rectitude.
When I am undeceived, it is not set right, for it never was
otherwise; and still keeping to truth has the authority to call, and
bring me back to it.  It is an inward master that makes me either be
silent or speak; believe, or doubt; acknowledge my errors, or
confirm my judgment.  I am instructed by hearkening to it; whereas I
err and go astray when I hearken to myself.  That Master is
everywhere, and His voice is heard, from one end of the universe to
the other, by all men as well as me.  Whilst He corrects and
rectifies me in France, He corrects and sets right other men in
China, Japan, Mexico, and in Peru, by the same principles.


SECT.  LVI.  Reason is the Same in all Men, of all Ages and
Countries.


Two men who never saw or heard of one another, and who never
entertained any correspondence with any other man that could give
them common notions, yet speak at two extremities of the earth,
about a certain number of truths, as if they were in concert.  It is
infallibly known beforehand in one hemisphere, what will be answered
in the other upon these truths.  Men of all countries and of all
ages, whatever their education may have been, find themselves
invincibly subjected and obliged to think and speak in the same
manner.  The Master who incessantly teaches us makes all of us think
the same way.  Whenever we hastily judge, without hearkening to His
voice, in diffidence of ourselves, we think and utter dreams full of
extravagance.  Thus what appears most to be part of ourselves, and
our very essence, I mean our reason, is least our own, and what, on
the contrary, ought to be accounted most borrowed.  We continually
receive a reason superior to us, as we incessantly breathe the air,
which is a foreign body; or as we incessantly see all the objects
near us by the light of the sun, whose rays are bodies foreign to
our eyes.  That superior reason over-rules and governs, to a certain
degree, with an absolute power all men, even the least rational, and
makes them all ever agree, in spite of themselves, upon those
points.  It is she that makes a savage in Canada think about a great
many things, just as the Greek and Roman philosophers did.  It is
she that made the Chinese geometricians find out much of the same
truths with the Europeans, whilst those nations so very remote were
unknown one to another.  It is she that makes people in Japan
conclude, as in France, that two and two make four; nor is it
apprehended that any nation shall ever change their opinion about
it.  It is she that makes men think nowadays about certain points,
just as men thought about the same four thousand years ago.  It is
she that gives uniform thoughts to the most jealous and jarring men,
and the most irreconcilable among themselves.  It is by her that men
of all ages and countries are, as it were, chained about an
immovable centre, and held in the bonds of amity by certain
invariable rules, called first principles, notwithstanding the
infinite variations of opinions that arise in them from their
passion, avocations, and caprices, which over-rule all their other
less-clear judgments.  It is through her that men, as depraved as
they are, have not yet presumed openly to bestow on vice the name of
virtue, and that they are reduced to dissemble being just, sincere,
moderate, benevolent, in order to gain one another's esteem.  The
most wicked and abandoned of men cannot be brought to esteem what
they wish they could esteem, or to despise what they wish they could
despise.  It is not possible to force the eternal barrier of truth
and justice.  The inward master, called reason, intimately checks
the attempt with absolute power, and knows how to set bounds to the
most impudent folly of men.  Though vice has for many ages reigned
with unbridled licentiousness, virtue is still called virtue; and
the most brutish and rash of her adversaries cannot yet deprive her
of her name.  Hence it is that vice, though triumphant in the world,
is still obliged to disguise itself under the mask of hypocrisy or
sham honesty, to gain the esteem it has not the confidence to
expect, if it should go bare-faced.  Thus, notwithstanding its
impudence, it pays a forced homage to virtue, by endeavouring to
adorn itself with her fairest outside in order to receive the honour
and respect she commands from men.  It is true virtuous men are
exposed to censure; and they are, indeed, ever reprehensible in this
life, through their natural imperfections; but yet the most vicious
cannot totally efface in themselves the idea of true virtue.  There
never was yet any man upon earth that could prevail either with
others, or himself, to allow, as a received maxim, that to be
knavish, passionate, and mischievous, is more honourable than to be
honest, moderate, good-natured, and benevolent.


SECT.  LVII.  Reason in Man is Independent of and above Him.


I have already evinced that the inward and universal master, at all
times, and in all places, speaks the same truths.  We are not that
master:  though it is true we often speak without, and higher than
him.  But then we mistake, stutter, and do not so much as understand
ourselves.  We are even afraid of being made sensible of our
mistakes, and we shut up our ears, lest we should be humbled by his
corrections.  Certainly the man who is apprehensive of being
corrected and reproved by that uncorruptible reason, and ever goes
astray when he does not follow it, is not that perfect, universal,
and immutable reason, that corrects him, in spite of himself.  In
all things we find, as it were, two principles within us.  The one
gives, the other receives; the one fails, or is defective; the other
makes up; the one mistakes, the other rectifies; the one goes awry,
through his inclination, the other sets him right.  It was the
mistaken and ill-understood experience of this that led the
Marcionites and Manicheans into error.  Every man is conscious
within himself of a limited and inferior reason, that goes astray
and errs, as soon as it gets loose from an entire subordination, and
which mends its error no other way, but by returning under the yoke
of another superior, universal, and immutable reason.  Thus
everything within us argues an inferior, limited, communicated, and
borrowed reason, that wants every moment to be rectified by another.
All men are rational by means of the same reason, that communicates
itself to them, according to various degrees.  There is a certain
number of wise men; but the wisdom from which they draw theirs, as
from an inexhaustible source, and which makes them what they are, is
but ONE.


SECT.  LVIII.  It is the Primitive Truth, that Lights all Minds, by
communicating itself to them.


Where is that wisdom?  Where is that reason, at once both common and
superior to all limited and imperfect reasons of mankind?  Where is
that oracle, which is never silent, and against which all the vain
prejudices of men cannot prevail?  Where is that reason which we
have ever occasion to consult, and which prevents us to create in us
the desire of hearing its voice?  Where is that lively light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world?  Where is that pure
and soft light, which not only lights those eyes that are open, but
which opens eyes that are shut; cures sore eyes; gives eyes to those
that have none to see it; in short, which raises the desire of being
lighted by it, and gains even their love, who were afraid to see it?
Every eye sees it; nor would it see anything, unless it saw it;
since it is by that light and its pure rays that the eye sees
everything.  As the sensibler sun in the firmament lights all
bodies, so the sun of intelligence lights all minds.  The substance
of a man's eye is not the light:  on the contrary, the eye borrows,
every moment, the light from the rays of the sun.  Just in the same
manner, my mind is not the primitive reason, or universal and
immutable truth; but only the organ through which that original
light passes, and which is lighted by it.  There is a sun of spirits
that lights them far better than the visible sun lights bodies.
This sun of spirits gives us, at once, both its light, and the love
of it, in order to seek it.  That sun of truth leaves no manner of
darkness, and shines at the same time in the two hemispheres.  It
lights us as much by night as by day; nor does it spread its rays
outwardly; but inhabits in every one of us.  A man can never deprive
another man of its beams.  One sees it equally, in whatever corner
of the universe he may lurk.  A man never needs say to another, step
aside, to let me see that sun; you rob me of its rays; you take away
my share of it.  That sun never sets:  nor suffers any cloud, but
such as are raised by our passions.  It is a day without shadow.  It
lights the savages even in the deepest and darkest caves; none but
sore eyes wink against its light; nor is there indeed any man so
distempered and so blind, but who still walks by the glimpse of some
duskish light he retains from that inward sun of consciences.  That
universal light discovers and represents all objects to our minds;
nor can we judge of anything but by it; just as we cannot discern
anybody but by the rays of the sun.


SECT.  LIX.  It is by the Light of Primitive Truth a Man Judges
whether what one says to him be True or False.


Men may speak and discourse to us in order to instruct us:  but we
cannot believe them any farther, than we find a certain conformity
or agreement between what they say, and what the inward master says.
After they have exhausted all their arguments, we must still return,
and hearken to him, for a final decision.  If a man should tell us
that a part equals the whole of which it is a part, we should not be
able to forbear laughing, and instead of persuading us, he would
make himself ridiculous to us.  It is in the very bottom of
ourselves, by consulting the inward master, that we must find the
truths that are taught us, that is, which are outwardly proposed to
us.  Thus, properly speaking, there is but one true Master, who
teaches all, and without whom one learns nothing.  Other masters
always refer and bring us back to that inward school where he alone
speaks.  It is there we receive what we have not; it is there we
learn what we were ignorant of; and find what we had lost by
oblivion.  It is in the intimate bottom of ourselves, he keeps in
store for us certain truths, that lie, as it were, buried, but which
revive upon occasion; and it is there, in short, that we reject the
falsehood we had embraced.  Far from judging that master, it is by
him alone we are judged peremptorily in all things.  He is a judge
disinterested, impartial, and superior to us.  We may, indeed,
refuse hearing him, and raise a din to stun our ears:  but when we
hear him it is not in our power to contradict him.  Nothing is more
unlike man than that invisible master that instructs and judges him
with so much severity, uprightness, and perfection.  Thus our
limited, uncertain, defective, fallible reason, is but a feeble and
momentaneous inspiration of a primitive, supreme, and immutable
reason, which communicates itself with measure, to all intelligent
beings.


SECT.  LX.  The Superior Reason that resides in Man is God Himself;
and whatever has been above discovered to be in Man, are evident
Footsteps of the Deity.


It cannot be said that man gives himself the thoughts he had not
before; much less can it be said that he receives them from other
men, since it is certain he neither does nor can admit anything from
without, unless he finds it in his own bottom, by consulting within
him the principles of reason, in order to examine whether what he is
told is agreeable or repugnant to them.  Therefore there is an
inward school wherein man receives what he neither can give himself,
nor expect from other men who live upon trust as well as himself.
Here then, are two reasons I find within me; one of which, is
myself, the other is above me.  That which is myself is very
imperfect, prejudiced, liable to error, changeable, headstrong,
ignorant, and limited; in short it possesses nothing but what is
borrowed.  The other is common to all men, and superior to them.  It
is perfect, eternal, immutable, ever ready to communicate itself in
all places, and to rectify all minds that err and mistake; in short,
incapable of ever being either exhausted or divided, although it
communicates itself to all who desire it.  Where is that perfect
reason which is so near me, and yet so different from me?  Where is
it?  Sure it must be something real; for nothing or nought cannot
either be perfect or make perfect imperfect natures.  Where is that
supreme reason?  Is it not the very God I look for?


SECT.  LXI.  New sensible Notices of the Deity in Man, drawn from
the Knowledge he has of Unity.


I still find other traces or notices of the Deity within me:  here
is a very sensible one.  I am acquainted with prodigious numbers
with the relations that are between them.  Now how come I by that
knowledge?  It is so very distinct that I cannot seriously doubt of
it; and so, immediately, without the least hesitation, I rectify any
man that does not follow it in computation.  If a man says seventeen
and three make twenty-two, I presently tell him seventeen and three
make but twenty; and he is immediately convinced by his own light,
and acquiesces in my correction.  The same Master who speaks within
me to correct him speaks at the same time within him to bid him
acquiesce.  These are not two masters that have agreed to make us
agree.  It is something indivisible, eternal, immutable, that speaks
at the same time with an invincible persuasion in us both.  Once
more, how come I by so just a notion of numbers?  All numbers are
but repeated units.  Every number is but a compound, or a repetition
of units.  The number of two, for instance, is but two units; the
number of four is reducible to one repeated four times.  Therefore
we cannot conceive any number without conceiving unity, which is the
essential foundation of any possible number; nor can we conceive any
repetition of units without conceiving unity itself, which is its
basis.

But which way can I know any real unit?  I never saw, nor so much as
imagined any by the report of my senses.  Let me take, for instance,
the most subtle atom; it must have a figure, length, breadth, and
depth, a top and a bottom, a left and a right side; and again the
top is not the bottom, nor one side the other.  Therefore this atom
is not truly one, for it consists of parts.  Now a compound is a
real number, and a multitude of beings.  It is not a real unit, but
a collection of beings, one of which is not the other.  I therefore
never learnt by my eyes, my ears, my hands, nor even by my
imagination, that there is in nature any real unity; on the
contrary, neither my senses nor my imagination ever presented to me
anything but what is a compound, a real number or a multitude.  All
unity continually escapes me; it flies me as it were by a kind of
enchantment.  Since I look for it in so many divisions of an atom, I
certainly have a distinct idea of it; and it is only by its simple
and clear idea that I arrive, by the repetition of it, at the
knowledge of so many other numbers.  But since it escapes me in all
the divisions of the bodies of nature, it clearly follows that I
never came by the knowledge of it, through the canal of my senses
and imagination.  Here therefore is an idea which is in me
independently from the senses, imagination, and impressions of
bodies.

Moreover, although I would not frankly acknowledge that I have a
clear idea of unity, which is the foundation of all numbers, because
they are but repetitions or collections of units:  I must at least
be forced to own that I know a great many numbers with their
proprieties and relations.  I know, for instance, how much make
900,000,000 joined with 800,000,000 of another sum.  I make no
mistake in it; and I should, with certainty, immediately rectify any
man that should.  Nevertheless, neither my senses nor my imagination
were ever able to represent to me distinctly all those millions put
together.  Nor would the image they should represent to me be more
like seventeen hundred millions than a far inferior number.
Therefore, how came I by so distinct an idea of numbers, which I
never could either feel or imagine?  These ideas, independent upon
bodies, can neither be corporeal nor admitted in a corporeal
subject.  They discover to me the nature of my soul, which admits
what is incorporeal and receives it within itself in an incorporeal
manner.  Now, how came I by so incorporeal an idea of bodies
themselves?  I cannot by my own nature carry it within me, since
what in me knows bodies is incorporeal; and since it knows them,
without receiving that knowledge through the canal of corporeal
organs, such as the senses and imagination.  What thinks in me must
be, as it were, a nothing of corporeal nature.  How was I able to
know beings that have by nature no relation with my thinking being?
Certainly a being superior to those two natures, so very different,
and which comprehends them both in its infinity, must have joined
them in my soul, and given me an idea of a nature entirely different
from that which thinks in me.


SECT.  LXII.  The Idea of the Unity proves that there are Immaterial
Substances; and that there is a Being Perfectly One, who is God.


As for units, some perhaps will say that I do not know them by the
bodies, but only by the spirits; and, therefore, that my mind being
one, and truly known to me, it is by it, and not by the bodies, I
have the idea of unity.  But to this I answer.

It will, at least, follow from thence that I know substances that
have no manner of extension or divisibility, and which are present.
Here are already beings purely incorporeal, in the number of which I
ought to place my soul.  Now, who is it that has united it to my
body?  This soul of mine is not an infinite being; it has not been
always, and it thinks within certain bounds.  Now, again, who makes
it know bodies so different from it?  Who gives it so great a
command over a certain body; and who gives reciprocally to that body
so great a command over the soul?  Moreover, which way do I know
whether this thinking soul is really one, or whether it has parts?
I do not see this soul.  Now, will anybody say that it is in so
invisible, and so impenetrable, a thing that I clearly see what
unity is?  I am so far from learning by my soul what the being One
is, that, on the contrary, it is by the clear idea I have already of
unity that I examine whether my soul be one or divisible.

Add to this, that I have within me a clear idea of a perfect unity,
which is far above that I may find in my soul.  The latter is often
conscious that she is divided between two contrary opinions,
inclinations, and habits.  Now, does not this division, which I find
within myself, show and denote a kind of multiplicity and
composition of parts?  Besides, the soul has, at least, a successive
composition of thoughts, one of which is most different and distinct
from another.  I conceive an unity infinitely more One, if I may so
speak.  I conceive a Being who never changes His thoughts, who
always thinks all things at once, and in which no composition, even
successive, can be found.  Undoubtedly it is the idea of the perfect
and supreme unity that makes me so inquisitive after some unity in
spirits, and even in bodies.  This idea, ever present within me, is
innate or inborn with me; it is the perfect model by which I seek
everywhere some imperfect copy of the unity.  This idea of what is
one, simple, and indivisible by excellence can be no other than the
idea of God.  I, therefore, know God with such clearness and
evidence, that it is by knowing Him I seek in all creatures, and in
myself, some image and likeness of His unity.  The bodies have, as
it were, some mark or print of that unity, which still flies away in
the division of its parts; and the spirits have a greater likeness
of it, although they have a successive composition of thoughts.


SECT.  LXIII.  Dependence and Independence of Man.  His Dependence
Proves the Existence of his Creator.


But here is another mystery which I carry within me, and which makes
me incomprehensible to my self, viz.:  that on the one hand I am
free, and on the other dependent.  Let us examine these two things,
and see whether it is possible to reconcile them.

I am a dependent being.  Independency is the supreme perfection.  To
be by one's self is to carry within one's self the source or spring
of one's own being; or, which is the same, it is to borrow nothing
from any being different from one's self.  Suppose a being that has
all the perfections you can imagine, but which has a borrowed and
dependent being, and you will find him to be less perfect than
another being in which you would suppose but bare independency.  For
there is no comparison to be made between a being that exists by
himself and a being who has nothing of his own--nothing but what is
precarious and borrowed--and is in himself, as it were, only upon
trust.

This consideration brings me to acknowledge the imperfection of what
I call my soul.  If she existed by herself, it would borrow nothing
from another; she would not want either to be instructed in her
ignorances, or to be rectified in her errors.  Nothing could reclaim
her from her vices, or inspire her with virtue; for nothing would be
able to render her will better than it should have been at first.
This soul would ever possess whatever she should be capable to
enjoy, nor could she ever receive any addition from without.  On the
other hand, it is no less certain that she could not lose anything,
for what is or exists by itself is always necessarily whatever it
is.  Therefore my soul could not fall into ignorance, error, or
vice, or suffer any diminution of good-will; nor could she, on the
other hand, instruct or correct herself, or become better than she
is.  Now, I experience the contrary of all these; for I forget,
mistake, err, go astray, lose the sight of truth and the love of
virtue, I corrupt, I diminish.  On the other hand, I improve and
increase by acquiring wisdom and good-will, which I never had.  This
intimate experience convinces me that my soul is not a being
existing by itself and independent; that is necessary, and immutable
in all it possesses and enjoys.  Now, whence proceeds this
augmentation and improvement of myself?  Who is it that can enlarge
and perfect my being by making me better, and, consequently, greater
than I was?


SECT.  LXIV.  Good Will cannot Proceed but from a Superior Being.


The will or faculty of willing is undoubtedly a degree of being, and
of good, or perfection; but good-will, benevolence, or desire of
good, is another degree of superior good.  For one may misuse will
in order to wish ill, cheat, hurt, or do injustice; whereas good-
will is the good or right use of will itself, which cannot but be
good.  Good-will is therefore what is most precious in man.  It is
that which sets a value upon all the rest.  It is, as it were, "The
whole man:" Hoc enim omnis homo.

I have already shown that my will is not by itself, since it is
liable to lose and receive degrees of good or perfection; and
likewise that it is a good inferior to good-will, because it is
better to will good than barely to have a will susceptible both of
good and evil.  How could I be brought to believe that I, a weak,
imperfect, borrowed, precarious, and dependent being, bestow on
myself the highest degree of perfection, while it is visible and
evident that I derive the far inferior degree of perfection from a
First Being?  Can I imagine that God gives me the lesser good, and
that I give myself the greater without Him?  How should I come by
that high degree of perfection in order to give it myself!  Should I
have it from nothing, which is all my own stock?  Shall I say that
other spirits, much like or equal to mine, give it me?  But since
those limited and dependent beings like myself cannot give
themselves anything no more than I can, much less can they bestow
anything upon another.  For as they do not exist by themselves, so
they have not by themselves any true power, either over me, or over
things that are imperfect in me, or over themselves.  Wherefore,
without stopping with them, we must go up higher in order to find
out a first, teeming, and most powerful cause, that is able to
bestow on my soul the good will she has not.


SECT.  LXV.  As a Superior Being is the Cause of All the
Modifications of Creatures, so it is Impossible for Man's Will to
Will Good by Itself or of its own Accord.


Let us still add another reflection.  That First Being is the cause
of all the modifications of His creatures.  The operation follows
the Being, as the philosophers are used to speak.  A being that is
dependent in the essence of his being cannot but be dependent in all
his operations, for the accessory follows the principal.  Therefore,
the Author of the essence of the being is also the Author of all the
modifications or modes of being of creatures.  Thus God is the real
and immediate cause of all the configurations, combinations, and
motions of all the bodies of the universe.  It is by means or upon
occasion of a body He has set in motion that He moves another.  It
is He who created everything and who does everything in His
creatures or works.  Now, volition is the modification of the will
or willing faculty of the soul, just as motion is the modification
of bodies.  Shall we affirm that God is the real, immediate, and
total cause of the motion of all bodies, and that He is not equally
the real and immediate cause of the good-will of men's wills?  Will
this modification, the most excellent of all, be the only one not
made by God in His own work, and which the work bestows on itself
independently?  Who can entertain such a thought?  Therefore my
good-will which I had not yesterday and which I have to-day is not a
thing I bestow upon myself, but must come from Him who gave me both
the will and the being.

As to will is a greater perfection than barely to be, so to will
good is more perfect than to will.  The step from power to a
virtuous act is the greatest perfection in man.  Power is only a
balance or poise between virtue and vice, or a suspension between
good and evil.  The passage or step to the act is a decision or
determination for the good, and consequent by the superior good.
The power susceptible of good and evil comes from God, which we have
fully evinced.  Now, shall we affirm that the decisive stroke that
determines to the greater good either is not at all, or is less
owing to Him?  All this evidently proves what the Apostle says,
viz., that God "works both to will and to do of His good pleasure."
Here is man's dependence; let us look for his liberty.


SECT.  LXVI.  Of Man's Liberty.


I am free, nor can I doubt of it.  I am intimately and invincibly
convinced that I can either will or not will, and that there is in
me a choice not only between willing and not willing, but also
between divers wills about the variety of objects that present
themselves.  I am sensible, as the Scripture says, that I "am in the
hands of my Council," which alone suffices to show me that my soul
is not corporeal.  All that is body or corporeal does not in the
least determine itself, and is, on the contrary, determined in all
things by laws called physical, which are necessary, invincible, and
contrary to what I call liberty.  From thence I infer that my soul
is of a nature entirely different from that of my body.  Now who is
it that was able to join by a reciprocal union two such different
natures, and hold them in so just a concert for all their respective
operations?  That tie, as we observed before, cannot be formed but
by a Superior Being, who comprehends and unites those two sorts of
perfections in His own infinite perfection.


SECT.  LXVII.  Man's Liberty Consists in that his Will by
determining, Modifies Itself.


It is not the same with the modification of my soul which is called
will, and by some philosophers volition, as with the modifications
of bodies.  A body does not in the least modify itself, but is
modified by the sole power of God.  It does not move itself, it is
moved; it does not act in anything, it is only acted and actuated.
Thus God is the only real and immediate cause of all the different
modifications of bodies.  As for spirits the case is different, for
my will determines itself.  Now to determine one's self to a will is
to modify one's self, and therefore my will modifies itself.  God
may prevent my soul, but He does not give it the will in the same
manner as He gives motion to bodies.  If it is God who modifies me,
I modify myself with Him, and am with Him a real cause of my own
will.  My will is so much my own that I am only to blame if I do not
will what I ought.  When I will a thing it is in my power not to
will it, and when I do not will it it is likewise in my power to
will it.  I neither am nor can be compelled in my will; for I cannot
will what I actually will in spite of myself, since the will I mean
evidently excludes all manner of constraint.  Besides the exemption
from all compulsion, I am likewise free from necessity.  I am
conscious and sensible that I have, as it were, a two-edged will,
which at its own choice may be either for the affirmative or the
negative, the yes or the no, and turn itself either towards an
object or towards another.  I know no other reason or determination
of my will but my will itself.  I will a thing because I am free to
will it; and nothing is so much in my power as either to will or not
to will it.  Although my will should not be constrained, yet if it
were necessitated it would be as strongly and invincibly determined
to will as bodies are to move.  An invincible necessity would have
as much influence over the will with respect to spirits as it has
over motion with respect to bodies; and, in such a case, the will
would be no more accountable for willing than a body for moving.  It
is true the will would will what it would; but the motion by which a
body is moved is the same as the volition by which the willing
faculty wills.  If therefore volition be necessitated as motion it
deserves neither more nor less praise or blame.  For though a
necessitated will may seem to be a will unconstrained, yet it is
such a will as one cannot forbear having, and for which he that has
it is not accountable.  Nor does previous knowledge establish true
liberty, for a will may be preceded by the knowledge of divers
objects, and yet have no real election or choice.  Nor is
deliberation or the being in suspense any more than a vain trifle,
if I deliberate between two counsels when I am under an actual
impotency to follow the one and under an actual necessity to pursue
the other.  In short, there is no serious and true choice between
two objects, unless they be both actually ready within my reach so
that I may either leave or take which of the two I please.


SECT.  LXVIII.  Will may Resist Grace, and Its Liberty is the
Foundation of Merit and Demerit.


When therefore I say I am free, I mean that my will is fully in my
power, and that even God Himself leaves me at liberty to turn it
which way I please, that I am not determined as other beings, and
that I determine myself.  I conceive that if that First Being
prevents me, to inspire me with a good-will, it is still in my power
to reject His actual inspiration, how strong soever it may be, to
frustrate its effect, and to refuse my assent to it.  I conceive
likewise that when I reject His inspiration for the good, I have the
true and actual power not to reject it; just as I have the actual
and immediate power to rise when I remain sitting, and to shut my
eyes when I have them open.  Objects may indeed solicit me by all
their allurements and agreeableness to will or desire them.  The
reasons for willing may present themselves to me with all their most
lively and affecting attendants, and the Supreme Being may also
attract me by His most persuasive inspirations.  But yet for all
this actual attraction of objects, cogency of reasons, and even
inspiration of a Superior Being, I still remain master of my will,
and am free either to will or not to will.

It is this exemption not only from all manner of constraint or
compulsion but also from all necessity and this command over my own
actions that render me inexcusable when I will evil, and
praiseworthy when I will good; in this lies merit and demerit,
praise and blame; it is this that makes either punishment or reward
just; it is upon this consideration that men exhort, rebuke,
threaten, and promise.  This is the foundation of all policy,
instruction, and rules of morality.  The upshot of the merit and
demerit of human actions rests upon this basis, that nothing is so
much in the power of our will as our will itself, and that we have
this free-will--this, as it were, two-edged faculty--and this
elative power between two counsels which are immediately, as it
were, within our reach.  It is what shepherds and husbandmen sing in
the fields, what merchants and artificers suppose in their traffic,
what actors represent in public shows, what magistrates believe in
their councils, what doctors teach in their schools; it is that, in
short, which no man of sense can seriously call in question.  That
truth imprinted in the bottom of our hearts, is supposed in the
practice, even by those philosophers who would endeavour to shake it
by their empty speculations.  The intimate evidence of that truth is
like that of the first principles, which want no proof, and which
serve themselves as proofs to other truths that are not so clear and
self-evident.  But how could the First Being make a creature who is
himself the umpire of his own actions?


SECT.  LXIX.  A Character of the Deity, both in the Dependence and
Independence of Man.


Let us now put together these two truths equally certain.  I am
dependent upon a First Being even in my own will; and nevertheless I
am free.  What then is this dependent liberty? how is it possible
for a man to conceive a free-will, that is given by a First Being?
I am free in my will, as God is in His.  It is principally in this I
am His image and likeness.  What a greatness that borders upon
infinite is here!  This is a ray of the Deity itself:  it is a kind
of Divine power I have over my will; but I am but a bare image of
that supreme Being so absolutely free and powerful.

The image of the Divine independence is not the reality of what it
represents; and, therefore, my liberty is but a shadow of that First
Being, by whom I exist and act.  On the one hand, the power I have
of willing evil is, indeed, rather a weakness and frailty of my will
than a true power:  for it is only a power to fall, to degrade
myself, and to diminish my degree of perfection and being.  On the
other hand, the power I have to will good is not an absolute power,
since I have it not of myself.  Now liberty being no more than that
power, a precarious and borrowed power can constitute but a
precarious, borrowed, and dependent liberty; and, therefore, so
imperfect and so precarious a being cannot but be dependent.  But
how is he free?  What profound mystery is here!  His liberty, of
which I cannot doubt, shows his perfection; and his dependence
argues the nothingness from which he was drawn.


SECT.  LXX.  The Seal and Stamp of the Deity in His Works.


We have seen the prints of the Deity, or to speak more properly, the
seal and stamp of God Himself, in all that is called the works of
nature.  When a man will not enter into philosophical subtleties, he
observes with the first cast of the eye a hand, that was the first
mover, in all the parts of the universe, and set all the wheels of
the great machine a-going.  The heavens, the earth, the stars,
plants, animals, our bodies, our minds:  everything shows and
proclaims an order, an exact measure, an art, a wisdom, a mind
superior to us, which is, as it were, the soul of the whole world,
and which leads and directs everything to his ends, with a gentle
and insensible, though omnipotent, force.  We have seen, as it were,
the architecture and frame of the universe; the just proportion of
all its parts; and the bare cast of the eye has sufficed us to find
and discover even in an ant, more than in the sun, a wisdom and
power that delights to exert itself in the polishing and adorning
its vilest works.  This is obvious, without any speculative
discussion, to the most ignorant of men; but what a world of other
wonders should we discover, should we penetrate into the secrets of
physics, and dissect the inward parts of animals, which are framed
according to the most perfect mechanics.


SECT.  LXXI.  Objection of the Epicureans, who Ascribe Everything to
Chance, considered.


I hear certain philosophers who answer me that all this discourse on
the art that shines in the universe is but a continued sophism.
"All nature," will they say, "is for man's use, it is true; but you
have no reason to infer from thence, that it was made with art, and
on purpose for the use of man.  A man must be ingenious in deceiving
himself who looks for and thinks to find what never existed."  "It
is true," will they add, "that man's industry makes use of an
infinite number of things that nature affords, and are convenient
for him; but nature did not make those things on purpose for his
conveniency.  As, for instance, some country fellows climb up daily,
by certain craggy and pointed rocks, to the top of a mountain; but
yet it does not follow that those points of rocks were cut with art,
like a staircase, for the conveniency of men.  In like manner, when
a man happens to be in the fields, during a stormy rain, and
fortunately meets with a cave, he uses it, as he would do a house,
for shelter; but, however, it cannot be affirmed that this cave was
made on purpose to serve men for a house.  It is the same with the
whole world:  it was formed by chance, and without design; but men
finding it as it is, had the art to turn and improve it to their own
uses.  Thus the art you admire both in the work and its artificer,
is only in men, who know how to make use of everything that
surrounds them."  This is certainly the strongest objection those
philosophers can raise; and I hope they will have no reason to
complain that I have weakened it; but it will immediately appear how
weak it is in itself when closely examined.  The bare repetition of
what I said before will be sufficient to demonstrate it.


SECT.  LXXII.  Answer to the Objection of the Epicureans, who
Ascribe all to Chance.


What would one say of a man who should set up for a subtle
philosopher, or, to use the modern expression, a free-thinker, and
who entering a house should maintain it was made by chance, and that
art had not in the least contributed to render it commodious to men,
because there are caves somewhat like that house, which yet were
never dug by the art of man?  One should show to such a reasoner all
the parts of the house, and tell him for instance:--Do you see this
great court-gate?  It is larger than any door, that coaches may
enter it.  This court has sufficient space for coaches to turn in
it.  This staircase is made up of low steps, that one may ascend it
with ease; and turns according to the apartments and stories it is
to serve.  The windows, opened at certain distances, light the whole
building.  They are glazed, lest the wind should enter with the
light; but they may be opened at pleasure, in order to breathe a
sweet air when the weather is fair.  The roof is contrived to defend
the whole house from the injuries of the air.  The timber-work is
laid slanting and pointed at the top, that the rain and snow may
easily slide down on both sides.  The tiles bear one upon another,
that they may cover the timber-work.  The divers floors serve to
make different stories, in order to multiply lodgings within a small
space.  The chimneys are contrived to light fire in winter without
setting the house on fire, and to let out the smoke, lest it should
offend those that warm themselves.  The apartments are distributed
in such a manner that they be disengaged from one another; that a
numerous family may lodge in the house, and the one not be obliged
to pass through another's room; and that the master's apartment be
the principal.  There are kitchens, offices, stables, and coach-
houses.  The rooms are furnished with beds to lie in, chairs to sit
on, and tables to write and eat on.  Sure, should one urge to that
philosopher, this work must have been directed by some skilful
architect; for everything in it is agreeable, pleasant,
proportioned, and commodious; and besides, he must needs have had
excellent artists under him.  "Not at all," would such a philosopher
answer; "you are ingenious in deceiving yourself.  It is true this
house is pleasant, agreeable, proportioned, and commodious; but yet
it made itself with all its proportions.  Chance put together all
the stones in this excellent order; it raised the walls, jointed and
laid the timber-work, cut open the casements, and placed the
staircase:  do not believe any human hand had anything to do with
it.  Men only made the best of this piece of work when they found it
ready made.  They fancy it was made for them, because they observe
things in it which they know how to improve to their own
conveniency; but all they ascribe to the design and contrivance of
an imaginary architect, is but the effect of their preposterous
imaginations.  This so regular, and so well-contrived house, was
made in just the same manner as a cave, and men finding it ready
made to their hands made use of it, as they would in a storm, of a
cave they should find under a rock in a desert."

What thoughts could a man entertain of such a fantastic philosopher,
if he should persist seriously to assert that such a house displays
no art?  When we read the fabulous story of Amphion, who by a
miraculous effect of harmony caused the stones to rise, and placed
themselves, with order and symmetry, one on the top of another, in
order to form the walls of Thebes, we laugh and sport with that
poetical fiction:  but yet this very fiction is not so incredible as
that which the free-thinking philosopher we contend with would dare
to maintain.  We might, at least, imagine that harmony, which
consists in a local motion of certain bodies, might (by some of
those secret virtues, which we admire in nature, without being
acquainted with them) shake and move the stones into a certain order
and in a sort of cadence, which might occasion some regularity in
the building.  I own this explanation both shocks and clashes with
reason; but yet it is less extravagant than what I have supposed a
philosopher should say.  What, indeed, can be more absurd, than to
imagine stones that hew themselves, that go out of the quarry, that
get one on the top of another, without leaving any empty space; that
carry with them mortar to cement one another; that place themselves
in different ranks for the contrivance of apartments; and who admit
on the top of all the timber-roof, with the tiles, in order to cover
the whole work?  The very children, that cannot yet speak plain,
would laugh, if they were seriously told such a ridiculous story.


SECT.  LXXIII.  Comparison of the World with a Regular House.  A
Continuation of the Answer to the Objection of the Epicureans.


But why should it appear less ridiculous to hear one say that the
world made itself, as well as that fabulous house?  The question is
not to compare the world with a cave without form, which is supposed
to be made by chance:  but to compare it with a house in which the
most perfect architecture should be conspicuous.  For the structure
and frame of the least living creature is infinitely more artful and
admirable than the finest house that ever was built.

Suppose a traveller entering Saida, the country where the ancient
Thebes, with a hundred gates, stood formerly, and which is now a
desert, should find there columns, pyramids, obelisks, and
inscriptions in unknown characters.  Would he presently say:  men
never inhabited this place; no human hand had anything to do here;
it is chance that formed these columns, that placed them on their
pedestals, and crowned them with their capitals, with such just
proportions; it is chance that so firmly jointed the pieces that
make up these pyramids; it is chance that cut the obelisks in one
single stone, and engraved in them these characters?  Would he not,
on the contrary, say, with all the certainty the mind of man is
capable of:  these magnificent ruins are the remains of a noble and
majestical architecture that flourished in ancient Egypt?  This is
what plain reason suggests, at the first cast of the eye, or first
sight, and without reasoning.  It is the same with the bare prospect
of the universe.  A man may by vain, long-winded, preposterous
reasonings confound his own reason and obscure the clearest notions:
but the single cast of the eye is decisive.  Such a work as the
world is never makes itself of its own accord.  There is more art
and proportion in the bones, tendons, veins, arteries, nerves, and
muscles, that compose man's body, than in all the architecture of
the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.  The single eye of the least of
living creatures surpasses the mechanics of all the most skilful
artificers.  If a man should find a watch in the sands of Africa, he
would never have the assurance seriously to affirm, that chance
formed it in that wild place; and yet some men do not blush to say
that the bodies of animals, to the artful framing of which no watch
can ever be compared, are the effects of the caprices of chance.


SECT.  LXXIV.  Another Objection of the Epicureans drawn from the
Eternal Motion of Atoms.


I am not ignorant of a reasoning which the Epicureans may frame into
an objection.  "The atoms will, they say, have an eternal motion;
their fortuitous concourse must, in that eternity, have already
produced infinite combinations.  Who says infinite, says what
comprehends all without exception.  Amongst these infinite
combinations of atoms which have already happened successively, all
such as are possible must necessarily be found:  for if there were
but one possible combination, beyond those contained in that
infinite, it would cease to be a true infinite, because something
might be added to it; and whatever may be increased, being limited
on the side it may receive an addition, is not truly infinite.
Hence it follows that the combination of atoms, which makes up the
present system of the world, is one of the combinations which the
atoms have had successively:  which being laid as a principle, is it
matter of wonder that the world is as it is now?  It must have taken
this exact form, somewhat sooner, or somewhat later, for in some one
of these infinite changes it must, at last, have received that
combination that makes it now appear so regular; since it must have
had, by turns, all combinations that can be conceived.  All systems
are comprehended in the total of eternity.  There is none but the
concourse of atoms, forms, and embraces, sooner or later.  In that
infinite variety of new spectacles of nature, the present was formed
in its turn.  We find ourselves actually in this system.  The
concourse of atoms that made will, in process of time, unmake it, in
order to make others, ad infinitum, of all possible sorts.  This
system could not fail having its place, since all others without
exception are to have theirs, each in its turn.  It is in vain one
looks for a chimerical art in a work which chance must have made as
it is.

"An example will suffice to illustrate this.  I suppose an infinite
number of combinations of the letters of the alphabet, successively
formed by chance.  All possible combinations are, undoubtedly,
comprehended in that total, which is truely infinite.  Now, it is
certain that Homer's Iliad is but a combination of letters:
therefore Homer's Iliad is comprehended in that infinite collection
of combinations of the characters of the alphabet.  This being laid
down as a principle, a man who will assign art in the Iliad, will
argue wrong.  He may extol the harmony of the verses, the justness
and magnificence of the expressions, the simplicity and liveliness
of images, the due proportion of the parts of the poem, its perfect
unity, and inimitable conduct; he may object that chance can never
make anything so perfect, and that the utmost effort of human wit is
hardly capable to finish so excellent a piece of work:  yet all in
vain, for all this specious reasoning is visibly false.  It is
certain, on the contrary, that the fortuitous concourse of
characters, putting them together by turns with an infinite variety,
the precise combination that composes the Iliad must have happened
in its turn, somewhat sooner or somewhat later.  It has happened at
last; and thus the Iliad is perfect, without the help of any human
art."  This is the objection fairly laid down in its full latitude;
I desire the reader's serious and continued attention to the answers
I am going to make to it.


SECT.  LXXV.  Answers to the Objection of the Epicureans drawn from
the Eternal Motion of Atoms.


Nothing can be more absurd than to speak of successive combinations
of atoms infinite in number; for the infinite can never be either
successive or divisible.  Give me, for instance, any number you may
pretend to be infinite, and it will still be in my power to do two
things that shall demonstrate it not to be a true infinite.  In the
first place, I can take an unit from it; and in such a case it will
become less than it was, and will certainly be finite; for whatever
is less than the infinite has a boundary or limit on the side where
one stops, and beyond which one might go.  Now the number which is
finite as soon as one takes from it one single unit, could not be
infinite before that diminution; for an unit is certainly finite,
and a finite joined with another finite cannot make an infinite.  If
a single unit added to a finite number made an infinite, it would
follow from thence that the finite would be almost equal to the
infinite; than which nothing can be more absurd.  In the second
place, I may add an unit to that number given, and consequently
increase it.  Now what may be increased is not infinite, for the
infinite can have no bound; and what is capable of augmentation is
bounded on the side a man stops, when he might go further and add
some units to it.  It is plain, therefore, that no divisible
compound can be the true infinite.

This foundation being laid, all the romance of the Epicurean
philosophy disappears and vanishes out of sight in an instant.
There never can be any divisible body truly infinite in extent, nor
any number or any succession that is a true infinite.  From hence it
follows that there never can be an infinite successive number of
combinations of atoms.  If this chimerical infinite were real, I own
all possible and conceivable combinations of atoms would be found in
it; and that consequently all combinations that seem to require the
utmost industry would likewise be included in them.  In such a case,
one might ascribe to mere chance the most marvellous performances of
art.  If one should see palaces built according to the most perfect
rules of architecture, curious furniture, watches, clocks, and all
sort of machines the most compounded, in a desert island, he should
not be free reasonably to conclude that there have been men in that
island who made all those exquisite works.  On the contrary, he
ought to say, "Perhaps one of the infinite combinations of atoms
which chance has successively made, has formed all these
compositions in this desert island without the help of any man's
art;" for such an assertion is a natural consequence of the
principles of the Epicureans.  But the very absurdity of the
consequence serves to expose the extravagance of the principle they
lay down.  When men, by the natural rectitude of their common sense,
conclude that such sort of works cannot result from chance, they
visibly suppose, though in a confused manner, that atoms are not
eternal, and that in their fortuitous concourse they had not an
infinite succession of combinations.  For if that principle were
admitted, it would no longer be possible ever to distinguish the
works of art from those that should result from those combinations
as fortuitous as a throw at dice.


SECT.  LXXVI.  The Epicureans confound the Works of Art with those
of Nature.


All men who naturally suppose a sensible difference between the
works of art and those of chance do consequently, though but
implicitly, suppose that the combinations of atoms were not
infinite--which supposition is very just.  This infinite succession
of combinations of atoms is, as I showed before, a more absurd
chimera than all the absurdities some men would explain by that
false principle.  No number, either successive or continual, can be
infinite; from whence it follows that the number of atoms cannot be
infinite, that the succession of their various motions and
combinations cannot be infinite, that the world cannot be eternal,
and that we must find out a precise and fixed beginning of these
successive combinations.  We must recur to a first individual in the
generations of every species.  We must likewise find out the
original and primitive form of every particle of matter that makes a
part of the universe.  And as the successive changes of that matter
must be limited in number, we must not admit in those different
combinations but such as chance commonly produces; unless we
acknowledge a Superior Being, who with the perfection of art made
the wonderful works which chance could never have made.


SECT.  LXXVII.  The Epicureans take whatever they please for
granted, without any Proof.


The Epicurean philosophers are so weak in their system that it is
not in their power to form it, or bring it to bear, unless one
admits without proofs their most fabulous postulata and positions.
In the first place they suppose eternal atoms, which is begging the
question; for how can they make out that atoms have ever existed and
exist by themselves?  To exist by one's self is the supreme
perfection.  Now, what authority have they to suppose, without
proofs, that atoms have in themselves a perfect, eternal, and
immutable being?  Do they find this perfection in the idea they have
of every atom in particular?  An atom not being the same with, and
being absolutely distinguished from, another atom, each of them must
have in itself eternity and independence with respect to any other
being.  Once more, is it in the idea these philosophers have of each
atom that they find this perfection?  But let us grant them all they
suppose in this question, and even what they ought to be ashamed to
suppose--viz., that atoms are eternal, subsisting by themselves,
independent from any other being, and consequently entirely perfect.


SECT.  LXXVIII.  The Suppositions of the Epicureans are False and
Chimerical.


Must we suppose, besides, that atoms have motion of themselves?
Shall we suppose it out of gaiety to give an air of reality to a
system more chimerical than the tales of the fairies?  Let us
consult the idea we have of a body.  We conceive it perfectly well
without supposing it to be in motion, and represent it to us at
rest; nor is its idea in this state less clear; nor does it lose its
parts, figure, or dimensions.  It is to no purpose to suppose that
all bodies are perpetually in some motion, either sensible or
insensible; and that though some parts of matter have a lesser
motion than others, yet the universal mass of matter has ever the
same motion in its totality.  To speak at this rate is building
castles in the air, and imposing vain imaginations on the belief of
others; for who has told these philosophers that the mass of matter
has ever the same motion in its totality?  Who has made the
experiment of it?  Have they the assurance to bestow the name of
philosophy upon a rash fiction which takes for granted what they
never can make out?  Is there no more to do than to suppose whatever
one pleases in order to elude the most simple and most constant
truths?  What authority have they to suppose that all bodies
incessantly move, either sensibly or insensibly?  When I see a stone
that appears motionless, how will they prove to me that there is no
atom in that stone but what is actually in motion?  Will they ever
impose upon me bare suppositions, without any semblance of truth,
for decisive proofs?


SECT.  LXXIX.  It is Falsely supposed that Motion is Essential to
Bodies.


However, let us go a step further, and, out of excessive
complaisance, suppose that all the bodies in Nature are actually in
motion.  Does it follow from thence that motion is essential to
every particle of matter?  Besides, if all bodies have not an equal
degree of motion; if some move sensibly, and more swiftly than
others; if the same body may move sometimes quicker and sometimes
slower; if a body that moves communicates its motion to the
neighbouring body that was at rest, or in such inferior motion that
it was insensible--it must be confessed that a mode or modification
which sometimes increases, and at other times decreases, in bodies
is not essential to them.  What is essential to a being is ever the
same in it.  Neither the motion that varies in bodies, and which,
after having increased, slackens and decreases to such a degree as
to appear absolutely extinct and annihilated; nor the motion that is
lost, that is communicated, that passes from one body to another as
a foreign thing--can belong to the essence of bodies.  And,
therefore, I may conclude that bodies are perfect in their essence
without ascribing to them any motion.  If they have no motion in
their essence, they have it only by accident; and if they have it
only by accident, we must trace up that accident to its true cause.
Bodies must either bestow motion on themselves, or receive it from
some other being.  It is evident they do not bestow it on
themselves, for no being can give what it has not in itself.  And we
are sensible that a body at rest ever remains motionless, unless
some neighbouring body happens to shake it.  It is certain,
therefore, that no body moves by itself, and is only moved by some
other body that communicates its motion to it.  But how comes it to
pass that a body can move another?  What is the reason that a ball
which a man causes to roll on a smooth table (billiards, for the
purpose) cannot touch another without moving it?  Why was it not
possible that motion should not ever communicate itself from one
body to another?  In such a case a ball in motion would stop near
another at their meeting, and yet never shake it.


SECT.  LXXX.  The Rules of Motion, which the Epicureans suppose do
not render it essential to Bodies.


I may be answered that, according to the rules of motion among
bodies, one ought to shake or move another.  But where are those
laws of motion written and recorded?  Who both made them and
rendered them so inviolable?  They do not belong to the essence of
bodies, for we can conceive bodies at rest; and we even conceive
bodies that would not communicate their motion to others unless
these rules, with whose original we are unacquainted, subjected them
to it.  Whence comes this, as it were, arbitrary government of
motion over all bodies?  Whence proceed laws so ingenious, so just,
so well adapted one to the other, that the least alteration of or
deviation from which would, on a sudden, overturn and destroy all
the excellent order we admire in the universe?  A body being
entirely distinct from another, is in its nature absolutely
independent from it in all respects.  Whence it follows that it
should not receive anything from it, or be susceptible of any of its
impressions.  The modifications of a body imply no necessary reason
to modify in the same manner another body, whose being is entirely
independent from the being of the first.  It is to no purpose to
allege that the most solid and most heavy bodies carry or force away
those that are less big and less solid; and that, according to this
rule, a great leaden ball ought to move a great ball of ivory.  We
do not speak of the fact; we only inquire into the cause of it.  The
fact is certain, and therefore the cause ought likewise to be
certain and precise.  Let us look for it without any manner of
prepossession or prejudice.  What is the reason that a great body
carries off a little one?  The thing might as naturally happen quite
otherwise; for it might as well happen that the most solid body
should never move any other body--that is to say, motion might be
incommunicable.  Nothing but custom obliges us to suppose that
Nature ought to act as it does.


SECT.  LXXXI.  To give a satisfactory Account of Motion we must
recur to the First Mover.


Moreover, it has been proved that matter cannot be either infinite
or eternal; and, therefore, there must be supposed both a first atom
(by which motion must have begun at a precise moment), and a first
concourse of atoms (that must have formed the first combination).
Now, I ask what mover gave motion to that first atom, and first set
the great machine of the universe a-going?  It is not possible to
elude this home question by an endless circle, for this question,
lying within a finite circumference, must have an end at last; and
so we must find the first atom in motion, and the first moment of
that first motion, together with the first mover, whose hand made
that first impression.


SECT.  LXXXII.  No Law of Motion has its Foundation in the Essence
of the Body; and most of those Laws are Arbitrary.


Among the laws of motion we must look upon all those as arbitrary
which we cannot account for by the very essence of bodies.  We have
already made out that no motion is essential to any body.  Wherefore
all those laws which are supposed to be eternal and immutable are,
on the contrary, arbitrary, accidental, and made without cogent
necessity; for there is none of them that can be accounted for by
the essence of bodies.

If there were any law of motion essential to bodies, it would
undoubtedly be that by which bodies of less bulk and less solid are
moved by such as have more bulk and solidity.  And yet we have seen
that that very law is not to be accounted for by the essence of
bodies.  There is another which might also seem very natural--that,
I mean, by which bodies ever move rather in a direct than a crooked
line, unless their motion be otherwise determined by the meeting of
other bodies.  But even this rule has no foundation in the essence
of matter.  Motion is so very accidental, and super-added to the
nature of bodies, that we do not find in this nature of bodies any
primitive or immutable law by which they ought to move at all, much
less to move according to certain rules.  In the same manner as
bodies might have existed, and yet have never either been in motion
or communicated motion one to another, so they might never have
moved but in a circular line, and this motion might have been as
natural to them as the motion in a direct line.  Now, who is it that
pitched upon either of these two laws equally possible?  What is not
determined by the essence of bodies can have been determined by no
other but Him who gave bodies the motion they had not in their own
essence.  Besides, this motion in a direct line might have been
upwards or downwards, from right to left, or from left to right, or
in a diagonal line.  Now, who is it that determined which way the
straight line should go?


SECT.  LXXXIII.  The Epicureans can draw no Consequence from all
their Suppositions, although the same should be granted them.


Let us still attend the Epicureans even in their most fabulous
suppositions, and carry on the fiction to the last degree of
complaisance.  Let us admit motion in the essence of bodies, and
suppose, as they do, that motion in a direct line is also essential
to all atoms.  Let us bestow upon atoms both a will and an
understanding, as poets did on rocks and rivers.  And let us allow
them likewise to choose which way they will begin their straight
line.  Now, what advantage will these philosophers draw from all I
have granted them, contrary to all evidence?  In the first place,
all atoms must have been in motion from all eternity; secondly, they
must all have had an equal motion; thirdly, they must all have moved
in a direct line; fourthly, they must all have moved by an immutable
and essential law.

I am still willing to gratify our adversaries, so far as to suppose
that those atoms are of different figures, for I will allow them to
take for granted what they should be obliged to prove, and for which
they have not so much as the shadow of a proof.  One can never grant
too much to men who never can draw any consequence from what is
granted them; for the more absurdities are allowed them, the sooner
they are caught by their own principles.


SECT.  LXXXIV.  Atoms cannot make any Compound by the Motion the
Epicureans assign them.


These atoms of so many odd figures--some round, some crooked, others
triangular, &c.--are by their essence obliged always to move in a
straight line, without ever deviating or bending to the right or to
the left; wherefore they never can hook one another, or make
together any compound.  Put, if you please, the sharpest hooks near
other hooks of the like make; yet if every one of them never moves
otherwise than in a line perfectly straight, they will eternally
move one near another, in parallel lines, without being able to join
and hook one another.  The two straight lines which are supposed to
be parallel, though immediate neighbours, will never cross one
another, though carried on ad infinitum; wherefore in all eternity,
no hooking, and consequently no compound, can result from that
motion of atoms in a direct line.


SECT.  LXXXV.  The Clinamen, Declination, or Sending of Atoms is a
Chimerical Notion that throws the Epicureans into a gross
Contradiction.


The Epicureans, not being able to shut their eyes against this
glaring difficulty, that strikes at the very foundation of their
whole system, have, for a last shift, invented what Lucretius calls
clinamen--by which is meant a motion somewhat declining or bending
from the straight line, and which gives atoms the occasion to meet
and encounter.  Thus they turn and wind them at pleasure, according
as they fancy best for their purpose.  But upon what authority do
they suppose this declination of atoms, which comes so pat to bear
up their system?  If motion in a straight line be essential to
bodies, nothing can bend, nor consequently join them, in all
eternity; the clinamen destroys the very essence of matter, and
those philosophers contradict themselves without blushing.  If, on
the contrary, the motion in a direct line is not essential to all
bodies, why do they so confidently suppose eternal, necessary, and
immutable laws for the motion of atoms without recurring to a first
mover?  And why do they build a whole system of philosophy upon the
precarious foundation of a ridiculous fiction?  Without the clinamen
the straight line can never produce anything, and the Epicurean
system falls to the ground; with the clinamen, a fabulous poetical
invention, the direct line is violated, and the system falls into
derision and ridicule.

Both the straight line and the clinamen are airy suppositions and
mere dreams; but these two dreams destroy each other, and this is
the upshot of the uncurbed licentiousness some men allow themselves
of supposing as eternal truths whatever their imagination suggests
them to support a fable; while they refuse to acknowledge the artful
and powerful hand that formed and placed all the parts of the
universe.


SECT.  LXXXVI.  Strange Absurdity of the Epicureans, who endeavour
to account for the Nature of the Soul by the Declination of Atoms.


To reach the highest degree of amazing extravagance, the Epicureans
have had the assurance to explain and account for what we call the
soul of man and his free-will, by the clinamen, which is so
unaccountable and inexplicable itself.  Thus they are reduced to
affirm that it is in this motion, wherein atoms are in a kind of
equilibrium between a straight line and a line somewhat circular,
that human will consists.

Strange philosophy!  If atoms move only in a straight line, they are
inanimate, and incapable of any degree of knowledge, understanding,
or will; but if the very same atoms somewhat deviate from the
straight line, they become, on a sudden, animate, thinking, and
rational.  They are themselves intelligent souls, that know
themselves, reflect, deliberate, and are free in their acts and
determinations.  Was there ever a more absurd metamorphosis?  What
opinion would men have of religion if, in order to assert it, one
should lay down principles and positions so trifling and ridiculous
as theirs who dare to attack it in earnest?


SECT.  LXXXVII.  The Epicureans cast a Mist before their own Eyes by
endeavouring to explain the Liberty of Man by the Declination of
Atoms.


But let us consider to what degree those philosophers impose upon
their own understandings.  What can they find in the clinamen that,
with any colour, can account for the liberty of man?  This liberty
is not imaginary; for it is not in our power to doubt of our free-
will, any more than it is to doubt of what we are intimately
conscious and certain.  I am conscious I am free to continue sitting
when I rise in order to walk.  I am sensible of it with so entire
certainty that it is not in my power ever to doubt of it in earnest;
and I should be inconsistent with myself if I dared to say the
contrary.  Can the proof of our religion be more evident and
convincing?  We cannot doubt of the existence of God unless we doubt
of our own liberty; from whence I infer that no man can seriously
doubt of the being of the Deity, since no man can entertain a
serious doubt about his own liberty.  If, on the contrary, it be
frankly acknowledged that men are really free, nothing is more easy
than to demonstrate that the liberty of man's will cannot consist of
any combination of atoms, if one supposes that there was no first
mover, who gave matter arbitrary laws for its motion.  Motion must
be essential to bodies, and all the laws of motion must also be as
necessary as the essences of natures are.  Therefore, according to
this system, all the motions of bodies must be performed by
constant, necessary, and immutable laws; the motion in a straight
line must be essential to all atoms, that are not made to deviate
from it by the encounter of other atoms; the straight line must
likewise be essential either upwards or downwards, either from right
to left, or left to right, or some other diagonal way, fixed,
precise, and immutable.  Besides, it is evident that no atom can
make another atom deviate; for that other atom carries also in its
essence the same invincible and eternal determination to follow the
straight line the same way.  From hence it follows that all the
atoms placed at first on different lines must pursue ad infinitum
those parallel lines without ever coming nearer one another; and
that those who are in the same line must follow one another ad
infinitum without ever coming up together, but keeping still the
same distance from one another.  The clinamen, as we have already
shown, is manifestly impossible:  but, contrary to evident truth,
supposing it to be possible, in such a case it must be affirmed that
the clinamen is no less necessary, immutable, and essential to atoms
than the straight line.  Now, will anybody say that an essential and
immutable law of the local motion of atoms explains and accounts for
the true liberty of man?  Is it not manifest that the clinamen can
no more account for it than the straight line itself?  The clinamen,
supposing it to be true, would be as necessary as the perpendicular
line, by which a stone falls from the top of a tower into the
street.  Is that stone free in its fall?  However, the will of man,
according to the principle of the clinamen, has no more freedom than
that stone.  Is it possible for man to be so extravagant as to dare
to contradict his own conscience about his free-will, lest he should
be forced to acknowledge his God and maker?  To affirm, on the one
hand, that the liberty of man is imaginary, we must silence the
voice and stifle the sense of all nature; give ourselves the lie in
the grossest manner; deny what we are most intimately conscious and
certain of; and, in short, be reduced to believe that we have no
eligibility or choice of two courses, or things proposed, about
which we fairly deliberate upon any occasion.  Nothing does religion
more honour than to see men necessitated to fall into such gross and
monstrous extravagance as soon as they call in question the truths
she teaches.  On the other hand, if we own that man is truly free,
we acknowledge in him a principle that never can be seriously
accounted for, either by the combinations of atoms or the laws of
local motion, which must be supposed to be all equally necessary and
essential to matter, if one denies a first mover.  We must therefore
go out of the whole compass of matter, and search far from combined
atoms some incorporeal principle to account for free-will, if we
admit it fairly.  Whatever is matter and an atom, moves only by
necessary, immutable, and invincible laws:  wherefore liberty cannot
be found either in bodies, or in any local motion; and so we must
look for it in some incorporeal being.  Now whose hand tied and
subjected to the organs of this corporeal machine that incorporeal
being which must necessarily be in me united to my body?  Where is
the artificer that ties and unites natures so vastly different?  Can
any but a power superior both to bodies and spirits keep them
together in this union with so absolute a sway?  Two crooked atoms,
says an Epicurean, hook one another.  Now this is false, according
to his very system; for I have demonstrated that those two crooked
atoms never hook one another, because they never meet.  But,
however, after having supposed that two crooked atoms unite by
hooking one another, the Epicurean must be forced to own that the
thinking being, which is free in his operations, and which
consequently is not a collection of atoms, ever moved by necessary
laws, is incorporeal, and could not by its figure be hooked with the
body it animates.  Thus which way so ever the Epicurean turns, he
overthrows his system with his own hands.  But let us not, by any
means, endeavour to confound men that err and mistake, since we are
men as well as they, and no less subject to error.  Let us only pity
them, study to light and inform them with patience, edify them, pray
for them, and conclude with asserting an evident truth.


SECT.  LXXXVIII.  We must necessarily acknowledge the Hand of a
First Cause in the Universe without inquiring why that first Cause
has left Defects in it.


Thus everything in the universe--the heavens, the earth, plants,
animals, and, above all, men--bears the stamp of a Deity.
Everything shows and proclaims a set design, and a series and
concatenation of subordinate causes, over-ruled and directed with
order by a superior cause.

It is preposterous and foolish to criticise upon this great work.
The defects that happen to be in it proceed either from the free and
disorderly will of man, which produces them by its disorder, or from
the ever holy and just will of God, who sometimes has a mind to
punish impious men, and at other times by the wicked to exercise and
improve the good.  Nay, it happens oftentimes that what appears a
defect to our narrow judgment in a place separate from the work is
an ornament with respect to the general design, which we are not
able to consider with views sufficiently extended and simple to know
the perfection of the whole.  Does not daily experience show that we
rashly censure certain parts of men's works for want of being
thoroughly acquainted with the whole extent of their designs and
schemes?  This happens, in particular, every day with respect to the
works of painters and architects.  If writing characters were of an
immense bigness, each character at close view would take up a man's
whole sight, so that it would not be possible for him to see above
one at once; and, therefore, he would not be able to read--that is,
put different letters together, and discover the sense of all those
characters put together.  It is the same with the great strokes of
Providence in the conduct of the whole world during a long
succession of ages.  There is nothing but the whole that is
intelligible; and the whole is too vast and immense to be seen at
close view.  Every event is like a particular character that is too
large for our narrow organs, and which signifies nothing of itself
and separate from the rest.  When, at the consummation of ages, we
shall see in God--that is, in the true point and centre of
perspective--the total of human events, from the first to the last
day of the universe, together with their proportions with regard to
the designs of God, we shall cry out, "Lord, Thou alone art just and
wise!"  We cannot rightly judge of the works of men but by examining
the whole.  Every part ought not to have every perfection, but only
such as becomes it according to the order and proportion of the
different parts that compose the whole.  In a human body, for
instance, all the members must not be eyes, for there must be hands,
feet, &c.  So in the universe, there must be a sun for the day, but
there must be also a moon for the night.  Nec tibi occurrit perfecta
universitas, nisi ubi majora sic praesto sunt, ut minora non desint.
This is the judgment we ought to make of every part with respect to
the whole.  Any other view is narrow and deceitful.  But what are
the weak and puny designs of men, if compared to that of the
creation and government of the universe?  "As much as the heavens
are above the earth, as much," says God in the Holy Writ, "are My
ways and My thoughts above yours."  Let, therefore, man admire what
he understands, and be silent about what he does not comprehend.
But, after all, even the real defects of this work are only
imperfections which God was pleased to leave in it, to put us in
mind that He drew and made it from nothing.  There is not anything
in the universe but what does and ought equally to bear these two
opposite characters:  on the one side, the seal or stamp of the
artificer upon his work, and, on the other, the mark of its original
nothing, into which it may relapse and dwindle every moment.  It is
an incomprehensible mixture of low and great; of frailty in the
matter, and of art in the maker?  The hand of God is conspicuous in
everything, even in a worm that crawls on earth.  Nothingness, on
the other hand, appears everywhere, even in the most vast and most
sublime genius.  Whatever is not God, can have but a stinted
perfection; and what has but a stinted perfection, always remains
imperfect on the side where the boundary is sensible, and denotes
that it might be improved.  If the creature wanted nothing, it would
be the Creator Himself; for it would have the fulness of perfection,
which is the Deity itself.  Since it cannot be infinite, it must be
limited in perfection, that is, it must be imperfect on one side or
other.  It may have more or less imperfection, but still it must be
imperfect.  We must ever be able to point out the very place where
it is defective, and to say, upon a critical examination, "This is
what it might have had, what it has not."


SECT.  LXXXIX.  The Defects of the Universe compared with those of a
Picture.


Do we conclude that a piece of painting is made by chance when we
see in it either shades, or even some careless touches?  The
painter, we say, might have better finished those carnations, those
draperies, those prospects.  It is true, this picture is not perfect
according to the nicest rules of art.  But how extravagant would it
be to say, "This picture is not absolutely perfect; therefore it is
only a collection of colours formed by chance, nor did the hand of
any painter meddle with it!"  Now, what a man would blush to say of
an indifferent and almost artless picture he is not ashamed to
affirm of the universe, in which a crowd of incomprehensible
wonders, with excellent order and proportion, are conspicuous.  Let
a man study the world as much as he pleases; let him descend into
the minutest details; dissect the vilest of animals; narrowly
consider the least grain of corn sown in the ground, and the manner
in which it germinates and multiplies; attentively observe with what
precautions a rose-bud blows and opens in the sun, and closes again
at night; and he will find in all these more design, conduct, and
industry than in all the works of art.  Nay, what is called the art
of men is but a faint imitation of the great art called the laws of
Nature, and which the impious did not blush to call blind chance.
Is it therefore a wonder that poets animated the whole universe,
bestowed wings upon the winds, and arrows on the sun, and described
great rivers impetuously running to precipitate themselves into the
sea, and trees shooting up to heaven to repel the rays of the sun by
their thick shades?  These images and figures have also been
received in the language of the vulgar, so natural it is for men to
be sensible of the wonderful art that fills all nature.  Poetry did
only ascribe to inanimate creatures the art and design of the
Creator, who does everything in them.  From the figurative language
of the poets those notions passed into the theology of the heathens,
whose divines were the poets.  They supposed an art, a power, or a
wisdom, which they called numen, in creatures the most destitute of
understanding.  With them great rivers were gods; and springs,
naiads.  Woods and mountains had their particular deities; flowers
had their Flora; and fruits, Pomona.  After all, the more a man
contemplates Nature, the more he discovers in it an inexhaustible
stock of wisdom, which is, as it were, the soul of the universe.


SECT.  XC.  We must necessarily conclude that there is a First Being
that created the Universe.


What must we infer from thence?  The consequence flows of itself.
"If so much wisdom and penetration," says Minutius Felix, "are
required to observe the wonderful order and design of the structure
of the world, how much more were necessary to form it!"  If men so
much admire philosophers, because they discover a small part of the
wisdom that made all things, they must be stark blind not to admire
that wisdom itself.


SECT.  XCI.  Reasons why Men do not acknowledge God in the Universe,
wherein He shows Himself to them, as in a faithful glass.


This is the great object of the universe, wherein God, as it were in
a glass, shows Himself to mankind.  But some (I mean, the
philosophers) were bewildered in their own thoughts.  Everything
with them turned into vanity.  By their subtle reasonings some of
them overshot and lost a truth which a man finds naturally and
simply in himself without the help of philosophy.

Others, intoxicated by their passions, live in a perpetual avocation
of thought.  To perceive God in His works a man must, at least,
consider them with attention.  But passions cast such a mist before
the eyes, not only of wild savages, but even of nations that seem to
be most civilised and polite, that they do not so much as see the
light that lights them.  In this respect the Egyptians, Grecians,
and Romans were no less blind or less brutish than the rudest and
most ignorant Americans.  Like these, they lay, as it were, buried
within sensible things without going up higher; and they cultivated
their wit, only to tickle themselves with softer sensations, without
observing from what spring they proceeded.  In this manner the
generality of men pass away their lives upon earth.  Say nothing to
them, and they will think on nothing except what flatters either
their brutish passions or vanity.  Their souls grow so heavy and
unwieldy that they cannot raise their thoughts to any incorporeal
object.  Whatever is not palpable and cannot be seen, tasted, heard,
felt, or told, appears chimerical to them.  This weakness of the
soul, turning into unbelief, appears strength of mind to them; and
their vanity glories in opposing what naturally strikes and affects
the rest of mankind, just as if a monster prided in not being formed
according to the common rules of Nature, or as if one born blind
boasted of his unbelief with respect to light and colours, which
other men perceive and discern.


SECT.  XCII.  A Prayer to God.


O my God, if so many men do not discover Thee in this great
spectacle Thou givest them of all Nature, it is not because Thou art
far from any of us.  Every one of us feels Thee, as it were, with
his hand; but the senses, and the passions they raise, take up all
the attention of our minds.  Thus, O Lord, Thy light shines in
darkness; but darkness is so thick and gloomy that it does not admit
the beams of Thy light.  Thou appearest everywhere; and everywhere
unattentive mortals neglect to perceive Thee.  All Nature speaks of
Thee and resounds with Thy holy name; but she speaks to deaf men,
whose deafness proceeds from the noise and clutter they make to stun
themselves.  Thou art near and within them; but they are fugitive,
and wandering, as it were, out of themselves.  They would find Thee,
O Sweet Light, O Eternal Beauty, ever old and ever young, O Fountain
of Chaste Delights, O Pure and Happy Life of all who live truly,
should they look for Thee within themselves.  But the impious lose
Thee only by losing themselves.  Alas! Thy very gifts, which should
show them the hand from whence they flow, amuse them to such a
degree as to hinder them from perceiving it.  They live by Thee, and
yet they live without thinking on Thee; or, rather, they die by the
Fountain of Life for want of quenching their drought in that
vivifying stream; for what greater death can there be than not to
know Thee, O Lord?  They fall asleep in Thy soft and paternal bosom,
and, full of the deceitful dreams by which they are tossed in their
sleep, they are insensible of the powerful hand that supports them.
If Thou wert a barren, impotent, and inanimate body, like a flower
that fades away, a river that runs, a house that decays and falls to
ruin, a picture that is but a collection of colours to strike the
imagination, or a useless metal that glisters--they would perceive
Thee, and fondly ascribe to Thee the power of giving them some
pleasure, although in reality pleasure cannot proceed from inanimate
beings, which are themselves void and incapable of it, but only from
Thee alone, the true spring of all joy.  If therefore Thou wert but
a lumpish, frail, and inanimate being, a mass without any virtue or
power, a shadow of a being, Thy vain fantastic nature would busy
their vanity, and be a proper object to entertain their mean and
brutish thoughts.  But because Thou art too intimately within them,
and they never at home, Thou art to them an unknown God; for while
they rove and wander abroad, the intimate part of themselves is most
remote from their sight.  The order and beauty Thou scatterest over
the face of Thy creatures are like a glaring light that hides Thee
from and dazzles their sore eyes.  Thus the very light that should
light them strikes them blind; and the rays of the sun themselves
hinder them to see it.  In fine, because Thou art too elevated and
too pure a truth to affect gross senses, men who are become like
beasts cannot conceive Thee, though man has daily convincing
instances of wisdom and virtue without the testimony of any of his
senses; for those virtues have neither sound, colour, odour, taste,
figure, nor any sensible quality.  Why then, O my God, do men call
Thy existence, wisdom, and power more in question than they do those
other things most real and manifest, the truth of which they suppose
as certain, in all the serious affairs of life, and which
nevertheless, as well as Thou, escape our feeble senses?  O misery!
O dismal night that surrounds the children of Adam!  O monstrous
stupidity!  O confusion of the whole man!  Man has eyes only to see
shadows, and truth appears a phantom to him.  What is nothing, is
all; and what is all, is nothing to him.  What do I behold in all
Nature?  God.  God everywhere, and still God alone.  When I think, O
Lord, that all being is in Thee, Thou exhaustest and swallowest up,
O Abyss of Truth, all my thoughts.  I know not what becomes of me.
Whatever is not Thou, disappears; and scarce so much of myself
remains wherewithal to find myself again.  Who sees Thee not, never
saw anything; and who is not sensible of Thee, never was sensible of
anything.  He is as if he were not.  His whole life is but a dream.
Arise, O Lord, arise.  Let Thy enemies melt like wax and vanish like
smoke before Thy face.  How unhappy is the impious soul who, far
from Thee, is without God, without hope, without eternal comfort!
How happy he who searches, sighs, and thirsts after Thee!  But fully
happy he on whom are reflected the beams of Thy countenance, whose
tears Thy hand has wiped off, and whose desires Thy love has already
completed.  When will that time be, O Lord?  O Fair Day, without
either cloud or end, of which Thyself shalt be the sun, and wherein
Thou shalt run through my soul like a torrent of delight?  Upon this
pleasing hope my bones shiver, and cry out:--"Who is like Thee, O
Lord?  My heart melts and my flesh faints, O God of my soul, and my
eternal wealth."





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