ABSTRACT
when we see the authors of the different systems, concerning the formation of the world, reject the idea of a God, under the pretext, that this idea is foreign to the nature of our perceptions, should we not have a right to expect some better substitute for it? But, far from answering our expectations, they abandon themselves to all the wanderings of the most fantastic imagination. In fact, whether we refer the origin of the universe to the effect of hazard, the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or whether we establish another hypothesis derived from the same principle, it is necessary at least to suppose the eternal existence of an innumerable multitude of little particles of matter, placed without order in the immensity of space; and to suppose, afterwards, that these atoms, disseminated / to infinity, attracted each other, and corresponded by the inherent properties of their nature; and that there resulted, from their adhesion, not only organized, but intelligent faculties; it is necessary, in short, to suppose, that all those incomprehensible atoms have been settled with admirable order through the effect of a blind motion, and by the result of some of the possible chances in the infinity of accidental combinations. Indeed, after so many suppositions without example or foundation, that of an Intelligent Being, soul and director of the universe, had been more analogous and more consonant with our knowledge.
