ignation--would the world which was created to receive the beings
which we now are have been this unpleasant little park for small game,
this salad patch, this wooded, rocky and spherical kitchen garden where
your improvident Providence had destined us to live naked, in caves
or under trees, nourished on the flesh of slaughtered animals, our
brethren, or on raw vegetables nourished by the sun and the rain?

"But it is sufficient to reflect for a moment, in order to understand
that this world was not made for such creatures as we are. Thought,
which is developed by a miracle in the nerves of the cells in our brain,
powerless, ignorant and confused as it is, and as it will always remain,
makes all of us who are intellectual beings eternal and wretched exiles
on earth.

"Look at this earth, as God has given it to those who inhabit it. Is it
not visibly and solely made, planted and covered with forests for
the sake of animals? What is there for us? Nothing. And for them,
everything, and they have nothing to do but to eat or go hunting and
eat each other, according to their instincts, for God never foresaw
gentleness and peaceable manners; He only foresaw the death of creatures
which were bent on destroying and devouring each other. Are not the
quail, the pigeon and the partridge the natural prey of the hawk? the
sheep, the stag and the ox that of the great flesh-eating animals,
rather than meat to be fattened and served up to us with truffles, which
have been unearthed by pigs for our special benefit?

"As to ourselves, the more civilized, intellectual and refined we are,
the more we ought to conquer and subdue that animal instinct, which
represents the will of God in us. And so, in order to mitigate our
lot as brutes, we have discovered and made everything, beginning with
houses, then exquisite food, sauces, sweetmeats, pastry, drink,
stuffs, clothes, ornaments, beds, mattresses, carriages, railways and
innumerable machines, besides arts and sciences, writing and poetry.
Every ideal comes from us as do all the amenities of life, in order to
make our existence as simple reproducers, for which divine Providence
solely intended us, less monotonous and less hard.

"Look at this theatre. Is there not here a human world created by us,
unforeseen and unknown to eternal fate, intelligible to our minds alone,
a sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been invented solely
by and for that discontented and restless little a