weak imagination of man is able to form; that when this nature appears
to afflict him, it is only from the contraction of his own views, from
the narrowness of his own ideas, that he judges; that, in fact, what he
considers the evils of nature, are the greatest possible benefits he can
receive, if he was but in a condition to be acquainted with previous
causes, with subsequent effects. That the evils resulting to him from
his own vices, have equally their remedies in this nature, which it is
his duty to study; which if he does he will find, that the same
omnipotent goodness, who gave her irrefragable laws, also planted in her
bosom, balsams for all his maladies, whether physical or moral: but that
it is not given him to know what this great, this universal cause is,
for purposes of which he ought not to dispute the wisdom, when he
contemplates the mighty wonders that surround him.

Thus man ever preferred an unknown power, to that of which he was
enabled to have some knowledge, if he had only deigned to consult his
experience; but he presently ceases to respect that which he
understands; to estimate those objects which are familiar to him: he
figures to himself something marvellous in every thing he does not
comprehend; his mind, above all, labours to seize upon that which
appears to escape his consideration; in default of experience, he no
longer consults any thing, but his imagination, which feeds him with
chimeras. In consequence, those speculators who have subtilly
distinguished nature from her own powers, have successively laboured to
clothe the powers thus separated with, a thousand incomprehensible
qualities: as they did not see this power, which is only a mode, they
made it a spirit--an intelligence--an incorporeal being; that is to say,
of a substance totally different from every thing of which we have a
knowledge. They never perceived that all their inventions, that all the
words which they imagined, only served to mask their real ignorance;