times with all the other stars, when the sun is obliged to go and
carry back the day to the other hemisphere. Thus night itself,
notwithstanding its darkness, has a light, duskish indeed, but soft
and useful. That light is borrowed from the sun, though absent:
and thus everything is managed with such excellent art in the
universe that a globe near the earth, and as dark as she of itself,
serves, nevertheless, to send back to her, by reflection, the rays
it receives from the sun; and that the sun lights by means of the
moon the people that cannot see him while he must light others.

It may be said that the motion of the stars is settled and regulated
by unchangeable laws. I suppose it is; but this very supposition
proves what I labour to evince. Who is it that has given to all
nature laws at once so constant and so wholesome, laws so very
simple, that one is tempted to believe they establish themselves of
their own accord, and so productive of beneficial and useful effects
that one cannot avoid acknowledging a marvellous art in them?
Whence proceeds the government of that universal machine which
incessantly works for us without so much as our thinking upon it?
To whom shall we ascribe the choice and gathering of so many deep
and so well conceited springs, and of so many bodies, great and
small, visible and invisible, which equally concur to serve us? The
least atom of this machine that should happen to be out of order
would unhinge all nature. For the springs and movements of a watch
are not put together with so much art and niceness as those of the
universe. What then must be a design so extensive, so coherent, so
excellent, so beneficial? The necessity of those laws, instead of
deterring me from inquiring into their author, does but heighten my
curiosity and admiration. Certainly, it required a hand equally
artful and powerful to put in His work an order equally simple and