become, as to know what he has been.

With respect to those who may ask why Nature does not produce new
beings? we may enquire of them in turn, upon what foundation they
suppose this fact? What it is that authorizes them to believe this
sterility in Nature? Know they if, in the various combinations which she
is every instant forming, Nature be not occupied in producing new
beings, without the cognizance of these observers? Who has informed them
that this Nature is not actually assembling, in her immense elaboratory,
the elements suitable to bring to light, generations entirely new, that
will have nothing in common with those of the species at present
existing? What absurdity then, or what want of just inference would
there be, to imagine that the man, the horse, the fish, the bird, will
be no more? Are these animals so indispensably requisite to Nature, that
without them she cannot continue her eternal course? Does not all change
around us? Do we not ourselves change? Is it not evident that the whole
universe has not been, in its anterior eternal duration, rigorously the
same that it now is? that it is impossible, in its posterior eternal
duration, it can be rigidly in the same state that it now is for a
single instant? How, then, pretend to divine that, to which the infinite
succession of destruction, of reproduction, of combination, of
dissolution, of metamorphosis, of change, of transposition, may be able
eventually to conduct it by their consequence? Suns encrust themselves,
and are extinguished; planets perish and disperse themselves in the vast
plains of air; other suns are kindled, and illumine their systems; new
planets form themselves, either to make revolutions round these suns, or
to describe new routes; and man, an infinitely small portion of the
globe, which is itself but an imperceptible point in the immensity of
space, vainly believes it is for himself this universe is made;
foolishly imagines he ought to be the confident of Nature; confidently