submitting every thing to physical laws, from which his imagination has
vainly exerted its utmost power to withdraw them; it will be found that
the phenomena of the moral world follow exactly the same general rules
as those of the physical; that the greater part of those astonishing
effects, which ignorance, aided by his prejudices, make him consider as
inexplicable, and regard as wonderful, are natural consequences flowing
from simple causes. He will find that the eruption of a volcano and the
birth of a Tamerlane are to Nature the same thing; in recurring to the
primitive causes of those striking events which he beholds with
consternation, which he contemplates with fearful alarm, in falling back
to the sources of those terrible revolutions, those frightful
convulsions, those dreadful explosions that distract mankind, lay waste
the fairest works of Nature, ravage nations, and tear up society by the
roots; he will find the wills that compassed the most surprising
changes, that operated the most extensive alterations in the state of
things, that brought about the most unlooked-for events, were moved by
physical causes, whose exility made him treat them as contemptible;
whose want of consequence in his own purblind eyes led him to believe
them utterly incapable to give birth to the phenomena whose magnitude
strikes him with such awe, whose stupendous range fills him with such
amazement.

If man was to judge of causes by their effects, there would be no small
causes in the universe. In a Nature where every thing is connected,
where every thing acts and re-acts, moves and changes, composes and
decomposes, forms and destroys, there is not an atom which does not play
an important part--that does not occupy a necessary station; there is
not an imperceptible particle, however minute, which, placed in
convenient circumstances, does not operate the most prodigious effects.
If man was in a capacity to follow the eternal chain, to pursue the