The Online Library of Liberty

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What are you, Nature? I live in you? but I have been searching for you for fifty years, and have never yet been able to find you.)

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It is on that account that I apply directly to yourself. I have been able to measure some of your globes, to ascertain their courses, and to point out the laws of motion; but I have never been able to ascertain what you are yourself.

Are you always active? Are you always passive? Do your elements arrange themselves, as water places itself over sand, oil over water, and air over oil? Have you a mind which directs all your operations—as councils are inspired as soon as they meet, although the individual members composing them are often ignorant? Explain to me, I entreat, the enigma in which you are enveloped.)

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Certainly, since your great universal system knows nothing of mathematics, and yet the laws by which you are regulated are those of the most profound geometry, there must necessarily be an eternal geometrician, who directs you, and presides over your operations.)

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We are curious. I should be pleased to learn how it is, that while so rough and coarse in your mountains, and deserts, and seas, you are at the same time so ingenious and finished in your animals and vegetables?)

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That word deranges all my ideas. What! is it possible that nature should be nothing but art.)

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It is undoubtedly true. The more I reflect on the subject, the more clearly I perceive that you are only the art of some Great Being, extremely powerful and skilful, who conceals Himself and exhibits you. All the reasoners, from the time of Thales, and probably long before him, have been playing at hide and seek with you. They have said, “I have hold of you”; and they in fact held nothing. We all resemble Ixion: he thought he embraced Juno, when he embraced only a cloud.)

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My beloved mother, pray tell me a little why you exist—why anything has existed?)

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Nothing itself, would it not be preferable to that multitude of existences formed to be continually dissolved; those tribes of animals born and reproduced to devour others, and devoured in their turn; those numberless beings endued with sensation, and formed to experience so many sensations of pain; and those other tribes of reasoning beings which never, or at least only rarely, listen to reason? For what purpose, Nature, was all this?)

nature.

Oh! pray go and inquire of Him who made me.

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Do you not assert that everything is necessary?)

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That is to say, it was necessary for the Divine Nature to do what it has done.)

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It is, however, necessary for me to talk to you upon it.)

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No; for that which is necessary to one is not always necessary to another. It is necessary for an Indian to possess rice, for an Englishman to eat animal food, as Russians must wear furs, and Africans gauze. One man believes that he has need of a dozen coach-horses, another limits himself to a pair of shoes, and a third walks gayly on his bare feet. I wish to speak to you of that which is necessary to all men.)

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How happens it then that men are sometimes born who are deprived of a part of these necessary faculties?)

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Are there not notions common to all men necessary to this purpose?)

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These necessary things—are they necessary in all times, and in all places?)

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Therefore, a new creed is not necessary to mankind. Men could live in society, and perform all their duties towards God, before they believed that Mahomet had frequent conversations with the angel Gabriel.)

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But since it exists, God has permitted it.)

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What do you mean by saying that God permits? Can anything happen but by His orders? To permit and to will—are they not with Him the same thing?)

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To commit a crime is to act against Divine justice—to disobey God. Therefore, as God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He has so made man that man commits it frequently. How does that arise?)

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I thought that you would instruct me, but you teach me nothing.)

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I should have cause to complain of a physician who made me acquainted with poisonous plants, without instructing me in regard to such as are salutary.)

selim.

I am no physician, nor are you a sick man; and it appears to me that I give you a very useful prescription, when I say to you: Distrust the inventions of charlatans; worship God; be an honest man; and believe that two and two make four.