e preserves admirably well without arguing upon
the matter, and reason would then be of no other use to him but to
throw him on the ground. The same happens with beasts; nor will it
avail anything to object that they reason as well as men, for this
objection does not in the least weaken my proof; and their reasoning
can never serve to account for the motions we admire most in them.
Will any one affirm that they know the nicest rules of mechanics,
which they observe with perfect exactness, whenever they are to run,
leap, swim, hide themselves, double, use shifts to avoid pursuing
hounds, or to make use of the strongest part of their bodies to
defend themselves? Will he say that they naturally understand the
mathematics which men are ignorant of? Will he dare to advance that
they perform with deliberation and knowledge all those impetuous and
yet so exact motions which even men perform without study or
premeditation? Will he allow them to make use of reason in those
motions, wherein it is certain man does not? It is an instinct,
will he say, that beasts are governed by. I grant it: for it is,
indeed, an instinct. But this instinct is an admirable sagacity and
dexterity, not in the beasts, who neither do, nor can then, have
time to reason, but in the superior wisdom that governs them. That
instinct, or wisdom, that thinks and watches for beasts, in
indeliberate things, wherein they could neither watch nor think,
even supposing them to be as reasonable as we, can be no other than
the wisdom of the Artificer that made these machines. Let us
therefore talk no more of instinct or nature, which are but fine
empty names in the mouth of the generality that pronounce them.
There is in what they call nature and instinct a superior art and
contrivance, of which human invention is but a shadow. What is
beyond all question is, that there are in beasts a prodigious number
of motions entirely indeliberate, and which yet are performed
according to the nicest rules of mechanics. It is the machine alone
that follows those rules: which is a fact independent from all
philosophy; and matter of fact is ever decisive. What would a man
think of a watch that should fly or slip away, turn, again, or
defend itself, for its own preservation, if he went about to break
it? Would he not admire the skill of the artificer? Could he be
induced to believe that the springs of that watch had formed,
proportioned, ranged, and united themselves