esign, the same aim, which are preservation, generation and
death.

There is unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear
witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather!
And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes,
eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of
the Deity who spoke with full knowledge.

MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION

Of what use are beauty and proportion in the construction of the snake?
They may have uses, some say, of which we are ignorant. At least let us
be silent then; let us not admire an animal which we know only by the
harm it does.

ANSWER

And be you silent too, seeing that you cannot conceive its utility any
more than I can; or avow that in reptiles everything is admirably
proportioned.

Some are venomous, you have been so yourself. Here there is question
only of the prodigious art which has formed snakes, quadrupeds, birds,
fish and bipeds. This art is sufficiently evident. You ask why the snake
does harm? And you, why have you done harm so many times? Why have you
been a persecutor? which is the greatest of all crimes for a
philosopher. That is another question, a question of moral and physical
ill. For long has one asked why there are so many snakes and so many
wicked men worse than snakes. If flies could reason, they would complain
to God of the existence of spiders; but they would admit what Minerva
admitted about Arachne, in the fable, that she arranges her web
marvellously.

One is bound therefore to recognize an ineffable intelligence which even
Spinoza admitted. One must agree that this intelligence shines in the
vilest insect as in the stars. And as regards moral and physical ill,
what can one say, what do? console oneself by enjoying physical and
moral good, in worshipping the Eternal Being who has made one and
permitted the other.

One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent
persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! what are
they? rogues.

SECTION II

Let us say a word on the moral question set in action by Bayle, to know
"if a society of atheists could exist?" Let us mark first of all in this
matter what is the enormous contradiction of men in this dispute; those
who have risen against Bayle's opinion with the greatest ardour; those
who have denied with the greatest insults the possibility of a society
of atheists, have since maintained