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of his frail existence, and to animate his
knowledge of himself by that of an in-
finity of distant objects, seems purposely
to have neglected to give him the means
of well knowing what he is obliged to
make a more ordinary use of---the indi-
viduals of his own species. Yet, when
duly considered, this appears less the ef-
fect of a refusal than of an extreme li-
berality; for, if there were any intelli-
gent being that could penetrate another
against his will, he would enjoy such an
advantage, as would of itself exclude
him from society; whereas, in the
sent state of things, each individual`en-
joying himself in full independence, com-
municates himself so much only as he
finds convenient."

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has had the advantage of being read by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits which that of Spinosa wanted. He is often luminous---sometimes eloquent; although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition, declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.

"Order and disorder do not exist."

What! in physics, is not a child born blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the species? Is it What shall I conclude from this? not the ordinary regularity of nature that That Spinosa frequently contradicted makes order, and irregularity that conhimself; that he had not always clear stitutes disorder? Is it not a great deideas; that in the great wreck of sys-rangement, a dreadful disorder, when tems, he clung sometimes to one plank, nature gives a child hunger and closes sometimes to another; that in this weak- the oesophagus? The evacuations of ness he was like Mallebranche, Arnauld, every kind are necessary; yet the chanBossuet, and Claude, who now and thennels are frequently without orifices, contradicted themselves in their disputes; } which it is necessary to remedy. Doubtthat he was like numberless metaphysicians and theologians I shall conclude, that I have additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions that I am a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as to believe ourselves always in the right.

less this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect without a cause: but it is a very disordered effect.

Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, a Le Tellier, a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the Baruch Spinosa, you are very con- massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Irish fused: but are you as dangerous as you massacres, &c., execrable disorders? are said to be? I maintain that you are This crime has its cause in passion, but not; and my reason is, that you are con- the effect is execrable: the cause is fafused, that you have written in bad La-tal; this disorder makes us shudder. tin, and that there are not ten persons in The origin of the disorder remains to be Europe who read you from beginning to discovered, but the disorder exists. end, although you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author?---he who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.

SECTION IV.

The "System of Nature."
The author of the System of Nature

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Experience proves to us, that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way."

This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this the author and the reader are alike ignorant.

Hence, are not the System of Nature, and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?

morals than the others are in physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's

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"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem impossi-position would evidently be the ruin of

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Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof: and if it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you say to yourself. "I know not!"

society. Besides, how does he know that we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not proved by experience, that the satisfac{tion of having subdued them is a thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them---a pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our quiet---we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages, wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances "Matter is eternal and necessary; but this proposition only to give in his sysits forms and its combinations are transi- tem a fresh proof of the necessity of tory and contingent," &c. { being virtuous.

"It will be asked, what is man?" &c. Assuredly, this article is no clearer than the most obscure of Spinosa's; and many readers will feel indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being explained.

It is hard to comprehend, matter being, according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be, or may not be but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a labyrinth.

When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid, { otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps. What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!

"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust, to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."

This maxim is yet more execrable in

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"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas, should have perceived, that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence nor the qualities, is a being of reason."

But truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any contradiction in saying, that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.

Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.

Story of the Eels on which the System is

founded.

We were assured, not long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half-adozen young rabbits.

! who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked About the year 1750 there was, in tails changed in the course of time into France, an English Jesuit called Need-thighs and legs. Such fancies are worham, disguised as a secular, who was thy to be placed with the eels formed by then serving as tutor to the nephew of meal. M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry. Having put some rye-meal into wellcorked bottles, and some boiled mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or from a grain of rye.

This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as false and ridiculous, as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rathe 1 Detter observer than Needham.

But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion was evident without his observations. Needham's eels soon fol

A natural philosopher, of some repu-lowed the Brussels' hen. tation, had no doubt that this Needham Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elewas a profound atheist. He concluded { gant, and judicious translator of Lucrethat, since eels could be made of rye- tius was so far led away, that he not only meal, men might be made of wheat in his notes to book viii. p. 361, repeats flour; that nature and chemistry pro-Needham's pretended experiments, but duce all; and that it was demonstrated he also does all he can to establish their we may very well dispense with an all-validity. forming God.

This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretel the future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no honour to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves with confusion.

It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have attributed to themselves the power of creating eels. But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined it to that of Maillet,

Here, then, we have the new foundation of the System of Nature.

The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself:

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After moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has produced organised beings, of whose production the water and meal were believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life, which is itself but an assemblage of motions."

Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme, intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars, might not also deign to form animalcule without a germ. Here is no contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found, or will ever find one.

Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is hacknied; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of Atheists in themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working these continual wonders.

The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what confusion ! and what temerity!

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wise, contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to go a step further.

Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility that any one, without being infinite, should tell where he resides, he concludes that he does not exist. This is not philoso→ phical; for we are not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say, it acts entirely by itself.

Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no God, in order to be believed on your words.

Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind-an objection alike ancient and philosophical;~~ an objection common, but fatal and terrible, Spinosa at least acknowledged an in- and to which we find no answer but in telligence acting in this great whole, the hope of a better life. Yet what is which constituted nature in this there this hope? We can have no certainty in was philosophy. But in the new system, it but from reason. But I will venture I am under the necessity of saying that to say, that when it is proved to us that there is none. a vast edifice, constructed with the greatMatter has extent, solidity, gravity, { est art, is built by an architect, whoever divisibility. I have all these as well as he may be, we ought to believe in that this stone but was a stone ever known { architect, even though the edifice should to feel and think. If I am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations and thoughts-to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire-most likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To this are you reduced.

Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen-a God composed of discordant qualities-a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is attributed the

passions of men—a God capricious, fickle,

unreasonable, absurd: but he cannot cannot combat the God of the wise. The

be stained with our blood, polluted by our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I enquire not whether the architect is a good one, whether I ought to be satisfied with his building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I only enquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house, containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built itself.

SECTION V.

The Necessity of believing in a Supreme
Being.

The great, the interesting object, as it

in uncertainty. We are here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, Go to Mecca, and instruct yourself by kiss

appears to me, is, not to argue metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging god, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea, and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime withouting the black stone, take hold of a cow's

remorse.

Hobbes says, that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged."

tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical to acquire the favour of the being of beings. I say to you, Continue to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with Apparently, he meant by this strange horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, exaggeration, a citizen who should seek the design which is manifested in all nato rule in the name of a god, a charlatan ture, and consequently the author of that who would make himself a tyrant. We design-the primordial and final cause of understand citizens, who, feeling the all; hope with me that our monade, weakness of human nature, its perverse- which reasons on the great eternal being, ness, and its misery, seek some prop to may be happy through that same great support it through the languors and hor-being. There is no contradiction in this. rors of this life. You can no more demonstrate its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathema

From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; wetically that it is so. In metaphysics we have, therefore, perpetual need of con- scarcely reason on anything but probasolation and hope. Of these your phi- bilities. We are all swimming in a sea losophy deprives us. The fable of Pan- of which we have never seen the shore. dora was better; it left us hope-which Woe be to those who fight while they you snatch from us! Philosophy, you swim! Land who can but he that say, furnishes no proof of happiness to cries out to me, "You swim in vain, come. No-but you have no demon- there is no land;" disheartens me, and stration of the contrary. There may deprives me of all my strength. be in us an indestructible monade which feels and thinks, without our knowing anything at all of how that monade is made. Reason is not absolutely op- You yourself own, in some passages posed to this idea, though reason alone of your work, that the belief in a God does not prove it. Has not this opinion has withheld some men on the brink of a prodigious advantage over yours? crime; for me, this acknowledgment is Mine is useful to mankind, yours is enough. If this opinion had prevented baneful; say of it what you will, it may but ten assassinations, but ten calumnies, encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI. or but ten iniquitous judgments on the a Cartouche. Mine may restrain them.earth, I hold that the whole earth ought Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus be- to embrace it.

What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles it-You, or I?

lieved that their monade, of whatever Religion, you say, has produced thoukind it was, would be united to the mo-sands of crimes-say, rather, superstinade of the great being; and they were the most virtuous of men.

In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with Pascal, "chuse the safest." There is no safety

tion, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.

Let us detest this monster which has

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