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164 tions of their carnal interests. To find out God, I only require you to make one effort—to open your eyes.

.—I see your aim. You are returning to the worn-out arguments that the sun turns on its axis in twenty-five days and a half, in spite of the absurd inquisition of Rome; that the light comes to us reflected from Saturn in fifteen minutes, in spite of the absurd supposition of Descartes, that every fixed star is a sun, like ours, surrounded by planets; that the countless stars, scattered through space, obey mathematical laws, discovered and proved by the great Newton; that a catechist announces God to children, and that Newton reveals Him to the sage, as a philosophical Frenchman said, who was persecuted in his own country for asserting as much. Do not trouble yourself to bring before me the ceaseless order which prevails in all parts of the universe. All that exists must have order of some sort. Rarefied matter must take a higher place than denser substances. The strongest press upon the weakest. Bodies moved with a greater impulse progress more rapidly than those moved with less. Things arrange themselves in this way of their own accord. In vain, after drinking a pint of wine, like Esdras, would you talk to me for a hundred and sixty hours together without shutting the mouth, I should not be convinced. Do you wish me to adopt an eternal being, infinite and immutable, who saw fit (I do not know when) to