Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/193

Rh create, from nothing, things which change every moment, and spiders to disembowel flies? Would you have me suppose, with the gossip Nieuwentyt, that God gave us ears that we might have faith, since faith cometh by hearing? No! no! I will not believe these quacks who have sold their drugs at a good price to fools. I keep to the little book of a Frenchman, who maintains that nothing exists nor can exist but nature; that nature does all, and is all; that it is impossible and contradictory that anything can exist beyond. In a word, I believe only in nature.

.—What if I tell you there is no such thing as nature; and that in us, around us, a thousand millions of leagues from us, all is art, without any exception.

.—What? All art! That's something new.

.—Few observe that. Nothing, however, is more true. I shall always say, make use of your eyes, and you will recognize and adore God. Think how those vast globes, which you see revolve in their immense orbits, observe deep mathematical laws. There is then a great calculator whom Plato called the eternal geometrician. You admire those newly invented machines, called orreries, because Lord Orrery invented them by imitating the maker. It is a feeble copy of our planetary system and its revolutions; also the periods of the changes of the solstice and equinox which bring us from day to day