p.
1253) that he did not believe God could give to matter or to any other
cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea
and the knowledge of organic nature. Also he was not yet disposed to
believe that God, with all his power over Nature and with all the
foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies that may arrive, could have
so disposed things that by the laws of mechanics alone a vessel (for
instance) should go to its port of destination without being steered during
its passage by some intelligent guide. I was surprised to see that limits
were placed on the power of God, without the adduction of any proof and
without indication that there was any contradiction to be feared on the
side of the object or any imperfection on God's side. Whereas I had shown
before in my Rejoinder that even men often produce through automata
something like the movements that come from reason, and that even a finite
mind (but one far above ours) could accomplish what M. Bayle thinks
impossible to the Divinity. Moreover, as God orders all things at once
beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more
strange than that of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the
whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by
means of their influence one upon the other.

This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore purposed
to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms organic bodies
himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to
intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine, we must hold the
opinion that God _preformed_ things in such sort that new organisms are
only a mechanical consequence of a preceding organic constitution. Even so
do butterflies come out of silkworms, an instance where M. Swammerdam has
shown that there is nothing but development. And I would have added that
nothing is better qualified than the preformation of plants and of animals
to confirm my System of Pre-established Harmony between the soul and the
body. For in this the body is prompted by its original constitution to
carry out with the help of external things all that it does in accordance
with the will of the soul. So the seeds by their original constitution [66]
carry out naturally the intentions of God, by an artifice greater still
than that which causes our body to perform everything in conformity with
our will. And since M