anything ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition
that,--matter being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps
in the infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of
admirable arrangements,--none of these admirable arrangements would have
been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which_ matter
successively took on. Therefore the mind ought to be more astonished at
the hypothetical duration of chaos."_[37] (§ 21.)

In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On the
Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and turned
towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be the best
after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of negation. He
desires no more than to show that revealed religion confers no
advantages which are not already secured by natural religion. "The
revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not find recommended
and practised under the law of nature; therefore it has taught us
nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought us no new truth;
for what is a truth but a proposition referring to an object, conceived
in terms which present clear ideas to me, and the connection of which
with one another is intelligible to me? Now revealed religion has
introduced no such propositions to us. What it has added to the natural
law consists of five or six propositions which are not a whit more
intelligible to me than if they were expressed in ancient Carthaginian,
inasmuch as the ideas represented by the terms, and the connection among
these ideas, escape me entirely."[38]

There is no sign in this piece that Diderot had examined the positive
grounds of natural religion, or that he was ready with any adequate
answer to the argument which Butler had brought forward in the previous
decade of the century. We do not see that he is aware as yet of there