ed in the method of worshiping them; and although experience
daily contradicted this, and showed by an infinity of examples that both
the beneficial and the injurious were indiscriminately bestowed on the
pious and the impious, the inveterate prejudices on this point have not
therefore been abandoned. For it was much easier for a man to place
these things aside with others of the use of which he was ignorant, and
thus retain his present and inborn state of ignorance, than to destroy
the whole superstructure and think out a new one. Hence it was looked
upon as indisputable that the judgments of the gods far surpass our
comprehension; and this opinion alone would have been sufficient to keep
the human race in darkness to all eternity, if mathematics, which does
not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms, had
not placed before us another rule of truth. In addition to mathematics,
other causes also might be assigned, which it is superfluous here to
enumerate, tending to make men reflect upon these universal prejudices,
and leading them to a true knowledge of things.

I have thus sufficiently explained what I promised in the first place to
explain. There will now be no need of many words to show that Nature has
set no end before herself, and that all final causes are nothing but
human fictions. For I believe that this is sufficiently evident both
from the foundations and causes of this prejudice, as well as from all
those propositions in which I have shown that all things are begotten by
a certain eternal necessity of Nature and in absolute perfection. Thus
much, nevertheless, I will add, that this doctrine concerning an end
altogether overturns nature. For that which is in truth the cause it
considers as the effect, and _vice versa_. Again, that which is first in
Nature it puts last; and, finally, that which is supreme and most
perfect it makes the most imperfect. For, passing by the first two
assertions as self-evident, it is plain that that effect is the most
perfect which is immediately produced by God, and in proportion as
intermediate causes are necessary for the production of a thing is it
imperfect. But if things which are immediately produced by God were made
in order that He might obtain the end He had in view, then the last
things for the sake of which the first exist, must be the most perfect
of all.

Again, this doctrine does away with God's perfection. For if God works
to obtain an end,