them, that they believed the whole world to be an animal, but a
rational and wise animal--in short, the Supreme God. This
philosophy reduced Polytheism, or the multitude of gods, to Deism,
or one God, and that one God to Nature, which according to them was
eternal, infallible, intelligent, omnipotent, and divine. Thus
philosophers, by striving to keep from and rectify the notions of
poets, dwindled again at last into poetical fancies, since they
assigned, as the inventors of fables did, a life, an intelligence,
an art, and a design to all the parts of the universe that appear
most inanimate. Undoubtedly they were sensible of the wonderful art
that is conspicuous in nature, and their only mistake lay in
ascribing to the work the skill of the Artificer.


SECT. XXX. Of Man.


Let us not stop any longer with animals inferior to man. It is high
time to consider and study the nature of man himself, in order to
discover Him whose image he is said to bear. I know but two sorts
of beings in all nature: those that are endowed with knowledge or
reason, and those that are not Now man is a compound of these two
modes of being. He has a body, as the most inanimate corporeal
beings have; and he has a spirit, a mind, or a soul--that is, a
thought whereby he knows himself, and perceives what is about him.
If it be true that there is a First Being who has drawn or created
all the rest from nothing, man is truly His image; for he has, like
Him, in his nature all the real perfection that is to be found in
those two various kinds or modes of being. But an image is but an
image still, and can be but an adumbration or shadow of the true