s; these rains
fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among
the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain
stretches from one end of the universe to the other.

But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this
principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute
atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present
arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident,
among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great
chain of fate.

Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going
back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has
not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are
produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the
present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father,
but everything has not always children. Here it is precisely as with a
genealogical tree; each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the
family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue.

There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is
incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from
Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this
genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the
Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well
beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is
clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to
right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a
well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not
see that that has had much influence on present affairs.

One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has
demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step
until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still
further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily
that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it
has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears
and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by
spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia
and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of al