religion, upon the arguments for the existence of a deity drawn from
final causes. This discussion Diderot professes to reproduce, and he
makes Saunderson discourse with much eloquence and some pathos.

By one of those mystifications which make the French polemical
literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers,
Diderot cites as his authority a _Life of Saunderson_, by Dr. Inchlif.
He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no such book
exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society of London, however, took the
jest of fathering atheism on one of its members in bad part, and Diderot
was systematically excluded from the honour of admission to that learned
body, as he was excluded all his life from the French Academy.

The reasoning which Diderot puts into the professor's mouth is at first
a fervid enlargement of the text, that the argument drawn from the
wonders of nature is very weak evidence for blind men. Our power of
creating new objects, so to speak, by means of a little mirror, is far
more incomprehensible to them, than the stars which they have been
condemned never to behold. The luminous ball that moves from east to
west through the heavens, is a less astonishing thing to them than the
fire on the hearth which they can lessen or augment at pleasure.[68]
"Why talk to me," says Saunderson, "of all that fine spectacle which has
never been made for me? I have been condemned to pass my life in
darkness; and you cite marvels that I cannot understand, and that are
only evidence for you and for those who see as you do. If you want me to
believe in God, you must make me touch him." The minister replied that
the sense of touch ought to be enough to reveal the divinity to him in
the admirable mechanism of his organs. To this, Saunderson:--"I repeat,
all that is not as fine for me as it is for you. But the animal
mechanism, even were it as perfect as you pretend, and as I daresay it