elter enough. What would you say of these insects, if they
were to take for real and final entities the relations of the places
which they inhabit to their organisation, and then fall into ecstasies
over the beauty of their subterranean architecture, and the wonderfully
superior intelligence of the gardener who arranges things so
conveniently for them?"[74] This is the notion which Voltaire himself
three years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of
_Micromegas_. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes the
giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself as the
final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on which
Catholicism is based.

In the same letter Diderot avows his dissent--hypocritically, we find
reason for suspecting--from Saunderson's conclusion. "It is commonly in
the night-time," he says, "that the mists arise which obscure in me the
existence of God; the rising of the sun never fails to scatter them. But
then the darkness is ever-enduring for the blind, and the sun only rises
for those who see." Diderot's denial of atheism seems more than
suspicious, when one finds him taking so much pains to make out
Saunderson's case for him, when he urges the argument following, for
instance: "If there had never existed any but material beings, there
would never have been spiritual beings; for then the spiritual beings
would either have given themselves existence, or else would have
received it from the material beings. But if there had never existed any
but spiritual beings, you will see that there would never have been
material beings. Right philosophy only allows me to suppose in things
what I can distinctly perceive in them. Now I perceive no other
faculties distinctly in the mind except those of willing and thinking,
and I no more conceive that thought and will can act on material beings
or on nothing, than I can conceive material beings or nothing acting on
spiritual beings." And he winds up his letter thus: "It is very
important not to take hemlock for parsley; but not important at all to
believe or to disbelieve in God. The world, said Montaigne, is a
tennis-ball that he has given to philosophers to toss hither and
thither; and I would say nearly as much of the Deity himself."[75]

In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that Diderot
threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert and
practically helpful way in which his mind was alway