wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really
chimerical.

"God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
inherent in all beings--the sum of their laws and properties--the
animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on
account of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations,
sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes
passive, has always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma.
All that man can comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not
perish; that it possesses essentially those properties by which the
world is held together like a living and organized being; that the
knowledge of these laws with respect to man is what constitutes wisdom;
that virtue and merit consist in their observance; and evil, sin, and
vice, in the ignorance and violation of them; that happiness and misery
result from these by the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend
and light ones rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose
chain extends from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly
bodies."*

* These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
Bronzes. Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
traits of Pythagorism.

At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to
illusion; but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves,
the life which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in
abhorrence, why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And
if it treats us with forbearance, what authority have you to be less
indulgent? Pious men! who speak of God with so much certainty and
confidence, be so good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend
what those abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and
soul, substance without matter, existence without body, life without
organs or sensation. If you k