XXXVII.--THE WONDERS OF NATURE EXPLAIN THEMSELVES BY NATURAL CAUSES.

Is there anything more surprising than the logic of so many profound
doctors, who, instead of acknowledging the little light they have upon
natural agencies, seek outside of nature--that is to say, in imaginary
regions--an agent less understood than this nature, of which they can at
least form some idea? To say that God is the author of the phenomena
that we see, is it not attributing them to an occult cause? What is God?
What is a spirit? They are causes of which we have no idea. Sages! study
nature and her laws; and when you can from them unravel the action of
natural causes, do not go in search of supernatural causes, which, very
far from enlightening your ideas, will but entangle them more and more
and make it impossible for you to understand yourselves.




XXXVIII--CONTINUATION.

Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God; that is to say,
in order to explain what you understand so little, you need a cause
which you do not understand at all. You pretend to make clear that which
is obscure, by magnifying its obscurity. You think you have untied a
knot by multiplying knots. Enthusiastic philosophers, in order to prove
to us the existence of a God, you copy complete treatises on botany; you
enter into minute details of the parts of the human body; you ascend