o devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of
sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations, that other crowd
of intelligences which so rarely hear reason. What is the good of all
that, Nature?

NATURE:

Oh! go and ask Him who made me.

_NECESSARY_

OSMIN:

Do you not say that everything is necessary?

SELIM:

If everything were not necessary, it would follow that God had made
useless things.

OSMIN:

That is to say that it was necessary to the divine nature to make all
that it has made?

SELIM:

I think so, or at least I suspect it; there are people who think
otherwise; I do not understand them; maybe they are right. I am afraid
of disputes on this subject.

OSMIN:

It is also of another necessary that I want to talk to you.

SELIM:

What! of what is necessary to an honest man that he may live? of the
misfortune to which one is reduced when one lacks the necessary?

OSMIN:

No; for what is necessary to one is not always necessary to the other:
it is necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have
meat; a fur is necessary to a Russian, and a gauzy stuff to an African;
this man thinks that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man
limits himself to a pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want
to talk to you of what is necessary to all men.

SELIM:

It seems to me that God has given all that is necessary to this species:
eyes to see with, feet for walking, a mouth for eating, an oesophagus
for swallowing, a stomach for digesting, a brain for reasoning, organs
for producing one's fellow creature.

OSMIN:

How does it happen then that men are born lacking a part of these
necessary things?

SELIM:

It is because the general laws of nature have brought about some
accidents which have made monsters to be born; but generally man is
provided with everything that is necessary to him in order to live in
society.

OSMIN:

Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in
society?

SELIM:

Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that
people respected their father and their mother, that people believed
themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied
oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded
liberty of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty
as enemies of the human race; those who think differently seemed to me
badly organized