I am not ignorant of a reasoning which the Epicureans may frame into
an objection. "The atoms will, they say, have an eternal motion;
their fortuitous concourse must, in that eternity, have already
produced infinite combinations. Who says infinite, says what
comprehends all without exception. Amongst these infinite
combinations of atoms which have already happened successively, all
such as are possible must necessarily be found: for if there were
but one possible combination, beyond those contained in that
infinite, it would cease to be a true infinite, because something
might be added to it; and whatever may be increased, being limited
on the side it may receive an addition, is not truly infinite.
Hence it follows that the combination of atoms, which makes up the
present system of the world, is one of the combinations which the
atoms have had successively: which being laid as a principle, is it
matter of wonder that the world is as it is now? It must have taken
this exact form, somewhat sooner, or somewhat later, for in some one
of these infinite changes it must, at last, have received that
combination that makes it now appear so regular; since it must have
had, by turns, all combinations that can be conceived. All systems
are comprehended in the total of eternity. There is none but the
concourse of atoms, forms, and embraces, sooner or later. In that
infinite variety of new spectacles of nature, the present was formed
in its turn. We find ourselves actually in this system. The
concourse of atoms that made will, in process of time, unmake it, in
order to make others, ad infinitum, of all possible sorts. This
system could not fail having its place, since all others without
exception are to have theirs, each in its turn. It is in vain one
looks for a chimerical art in a work which chance must have made as
it is.