Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/212

184 "It is the same light," said he, "which proceeds from all these luminaries, and comes to us from this planet, in a quarter of an hour, and from that star, in six months."

Parouba was deeply impressed, and said: "The heavens proclaim a God." All the crew looked on with admiration. But the pertinacious Birton, unmoved, continued as follows:

.—Be it so! There is a God; I grant it. But what is that to you and me? What connection is there between the superior Being and worms of the earth? What relation is there between His essence and ours? Epicurus, when he supposed a God in the planets, did well to conclude that he took no part in our horrors and follies; that we could neither please nor offend him; that he had no need of us; nor we of him. You admit a God, more worthy of the human mind than the God of Epicurus, or the gods of the east and west; but if you assert, with so many others, that God made the world and man for His own glory; that He formerly required sacrifices of oxen for His glory; that He appeared for His glory in our biped form, you would, I think, be asserting an absurdity. The love of glory is nothing but pride. A proud man is a conceited fellow, such as Shakespeare would introduce in his plays. This epithet cannot suit God—it does not agree with the divine nature—any more than injustice, cruelty or inconstancy. If God con-