_Modern Atheists.--Arguments of the Worshippers of God._
We are intelligent beings, and intelligent beings cannot have been
formed by a blind, brute, insensible being; there is certainly some
difference between a clod and the ideas of Newton. Newton's
intelligence, then, came from some other intelligence.
When we see a fine machine, we say there is a good machinist, and that
he has an excellent understanding. The world is assuredly an admirable
machine; therefore there is in the world, somewhere or other, an
admirable intelligence. This argument is old, but is not therefore the
worse.
All animated bodies are composed of levers and pulleys, which act
according to the laws of mechanics; of liquors, which are kept in
perpetual circulation by the laws of hydrostatics; and the reflection
that all these beings have sentiment which has no relation to their
organization, fills us with wonder.
The motions of the stars, that of our little earth round the sun--all
are operated according to the laws of the profoundest mathematics. How
could it be that Plato, who knew not one of these laws--the eloquent but
chimerical Plato, who said that the foundation of the earth was an
equilateral triangle, and that of water a right-angled triangle--the
strange Plato, who said there could be but five worlds, because there
were but five regular bodieshow, I say, was it that Plato, who was not
even acquainted with spherical trigonometry, had nevertheless so fine a
genius, so happy an instinct, as to call God the Eternal
Geometrician--to feel that there exists a forming Intelligence? Spinoza
himself confesses it. It is impossible to controvert this truth, which
surrounds us and presses us on all sides.
_Argument of the Atheists._
I have, however, known refractory individuals, who have said that there
is no forming intelligence, and that motion alone has formed all that we
see and all that we are. They say boldly that the combination of this
universe was possible because it exists; therefore it was possible for
motion of itself to arrange it. Take four planets only--Mars, Venus,
Mercury, and the Earth; let us consider them solely in the situations in
which they now are; and let us see how many probabilities we have that
motion will bring them again to those respective places. There are but
twenty-four chances in this combination; that is, it is only twenty-four
to one that these planets will not be found in the same situations with
respect to one another. To these four globes add that of Jupiter; and it
is then only a hundred and twenty to one that Jupiter, Mars, Venus,
Mercury, and our globe will not be placed in the same positions in which
we now see them.
Lastly, add Saturn; and there will then be only seven hundred and twenty
chances to one against putting these planets in their present
arrangement, according to their given distances. It is, then,
demonstrated that once, at least, in seven hundred and twenty cases,
chance might place these planets in their present order.
Then take all the secondary planets, all their motions, all the beings
that vegetate, live, feel, think, act, on all these globes; you have
only to increase the number of chances; multiply this number to all
eternity--to what our weakness calls _infinity_--there will still be an
unit in favor of the formation of the world, such as it is, by motion
alone; therefore it is possible that, in all eternity, the motion of
matter alone has produced the universe as it exists. Nay, this
combination must, in eternity, of necessity happen. Thus, say they, not
only it is possible that the world is as it is by motion alone, but it
was impossible that it should not be so after infinite combinations.
_Answer._
All this supposition seems to me to be prodigiously chimerical, for two
reasons: the first is, that in this universe there are intelligent
beings, and you cannot prove it possible for motion alone to produce
understanding. The second is, that, by your own confession, the chances
are infinity to unity, that an intelligent forming cause produced the
universe. Standing alone against infinity, a unit makes but a poor
figure.
Again Spinoza himself admits this intelligence; it is the basis of his
system. You have not read him, but you must read him. Why would you go
further than he, and, through a foolish pride, plunge into the abyss
where Spinoza dared not to descend? Are you not aware of the extreme
folly of saying that it is owing to a blind cause that the square of the
revolution of one planet is always to the squares of the others as the
cube of its distance is to the cubes of the distances of the others from
the common centre? Either the planets are great geometricians, or the
Eternal Geometrician has arranged the planets.
But where is the Eternal Geometrician? Is He in one place, or in all
places, without occupying space? I know not. Has He arranged all things
of His own substance? I know not. Is He immense, without quantity and
without quality? I know not. All I know is, that we must adore Him and
be just.
_New Objection of a Modern Atheist._
Can it be said that the conformation of animals is according to their
necessities? What are those necessities? Self-preservation and
propagation. Now, is it astonishing that, of the infinite combinations
produced by chance, those only have survived which had organs adapted
for their nourishment and the continuation of their species? Must not
all others necessarily have perished?
_Answer._
This argument, taken from Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by the
sensation given to animals and the intelligence given to man. How, as
has just been said in the preceding paragraph, should combinations
produced by chance produce this sensation and this intelligence? Yes,
doubtless, the members of animals are made for all their necessities
with an incomprehensible art, and you have not the boldness to deny it.
You do not mention it. You feel that you can say nothing in answer to
this great argument which Nature brings against you. The disposition of
the wing of a fly, or of the feelers of a snail, is sufficient to
confound you.
_An Objection of Maupertuis._
The natural philosophers of modern times have done nothing more than
extend these pretended arguments; this they have sometimes done even to
minuteness and indecency. They have found God in the folds of a
rhinoceros's hide; they might, with equal reason, have denied His
existence on account of the tortoise's shell.
_Answer._
What reasoning! The tortoise and the rhinoceros, and all the different
species, prove alike in their infinite varieties the same cause, the
same design, the same end, which are preservation, generation, and
death. Unity is found in this immense variety; the hide and the shell
bear equal testimony. What! deny God, because a shell is not like a
skin! And journalists have lavished upon this coxcombry praises which
they have withheld from Newton and Locke, both worshippers of the
Divinity from thorough examination and conviction!
_Another of Maupertuis's Objections._
Of what service are beauty and fitness in the construction of a serpent?
Perhaps, you say, it has uses of which we are ignorant. Let us then, at
least, be silent, and not admire an animal which we know only by the
mischief it does.
_Answer._
Be you silent, also, since you know no more of its utility than myself;
or acknowledge that, in reptiles, everything is admirably proportioned.
Some of them are venomous; you have been so too. The only subject at
present under consideration is the prodigious art which has formed
serpents, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and bipeds. This art is evident
enough. You ask, Why is not the serpent harmless? And why have you not
been harmless? Why have you been a persecutor? which, in a philosopher,
is the greatest of crimes. This is quite another question; it is that of
physical and moral evil. It has long been asked, Why are there so many
serpents, and so many wicked men worse than serpents? If flies could
reason, they would complain to God of the existence of spiders; but they
would, at the same time, acknowledge what Minerva confessed to Arachne
in the fable, that they arrange their webs in a wonderful manner.
We cannot, then, do otherwise than acknowledge an ineffable
Intelligence, which Spinoza himself admitted. We must own that it is
displayed as much in the meanest insect as in the planets. And with
regard to moral and physical evil, what can be done or said? Let us
console ourselves by the enjoyment of physical and moral good, and adore
the Eternal Being, who has ordained the one and permitted the other.
One word more on this topic. Atheism is the vice of some intelligent
men, and superstition is the vice of fools. And what is the vice of
knaves?--Hypocrisy.