Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God; that is to say,
in order to explain what you understand so little, you need a cause
which you do not understand at all. You pretend to make clear that which
is obscure, by magnifying its obscurity. You think you have untied a
knot by multiplying knots. Enthusiastic philosophers, in order to prove
to us the existence of a God, you copy complete treatises on botany; you
enter into minute details of the parts of the human body; you ascend
into the air to contemplate the revolutions of the stars; you return
then to earth to admire the course of the waters; you fly into ecstasies
over butterflies, insects, polyps, organized atoms, in which you think
to find the greatness of your God; all these things will not prove the
existence of this God; they will only prove that you have not the ideas
which you should have of the immense variety of causes and effects that
can produce the infinitely diversified combinations, of which the
universe is the assemblage. This will prove that you ignore nature, that
you have no idea of her resources when you judge her incapable of
producing a multitude of forms and beings, of which your eyes, even by
the aid of the microscope, see but the least part; finally, this will
prove, that not being able to know the sensible and comprehensible
agents, you find it easier to have recourse to a word, by which you
designate an agent, of whom it will always be impossible for you to form
any true idea.