Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 36.djvu/30

12 He's just, nor easily to wrath gives way, Why suffer we beneath so mild a sway: This is the fatal knot you should untie, Our evils do you cure when you deny? never have adopted Octavius, and Octavius could never have chosen Tiberius for his successor in the empire. The marriage of Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy and the Low Countries, gave rise to a war which lasted two hundred years. But Caesar's spitting on the right or left side, or the Duchess of Burgundy's dressing her head in this manner or in that, could have altered nothing in the general plan of Providence.

It follows, therefore, that there are some events which have consequences and others which have none. Their chain resembles a genealogical tree, some branches of which disappear at the first generation, whilst the race is continued by others. There are many events which pass away without ever generating others. Thus in every machine there are some effects indispensably necessary towards producing motion, and others which are productive of nothing at all. The wheels of a coach make it go; but whether they raise more or less dust, the journey is finished alike. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the chain would not be in the least discomposed by a small increase or diminution of the quantity of matter, or by an inconsiderable deviation from regularity.

The chain is not in an absolute plenum; it has been demonstrated that the celestial bodies perform their revolutions in an unresisting medium. Every space is not filled. It follows then, that there is not a progression of bodies from an atom to the most remote fixed star. There may of consequence be immense intervals between beings imbued with sensation, as well as between those that are not. We cannot then be certain, that man must be placed in one of these links joined to another by an uninterrupted connection. That all things are linked together means only that all things are regularly disposed of in their proper order. God is the cause and the regulator of that order. Homer's Jupiter was the slave of destiny; but, according to more rational philosophy, God is the master of destiny. (See Clarke's Treatise "Upon the Existence of God.")