utmost industry would likewise be included in them. In such a case,
one might ascribe to mere chance the most marvellous performances of
art. If one should see palaces built according to the most perfect
rules of architecture, curious furniture, watches, clocks, and all
sort of machines the most compounded, in a desert island, he should
not be free reasonably to conclude that there have been men in that
island who made all those exquisite works. On the contrary, he
ought to say, "Perhaps one of the infinite combinations of atoms
which chance has successively made, has formed all these
compositions in this desert island without the help of any man's
art;" for such an assertion is a natural consequence of the
principles of the Epicureans. But the very absurdity of the
consequence serves to expose the extravagance of the principle they
lay down. When men, by the natural rectitude of their common sense,
conclude that such sort of works cannot result from chance, they
visibly suppose, though in a confused manner, that atoms are not
eternal, and that in their fortuitous concourse they had not an
infinite succession of combinations. For if that principle were
admitted, it would no longer be possible ever to distinguish the
works of art from those that should result from those combinations
as fortuitous as a throw at dice.


SECT. LXXVI. The Epicureans confound the Works of Art with those
of Nature.


All men who naturally suppose a sensible difference between the
works of art and those of chance do consequently, though but
implicitly, suppose that the combinations of atoms were not