"But, my dear fellow, the truth of this must be evident to any one who
looks about him. If human thought, ordained by an omniscient Creator,
had been intended to be what it has become, altogether different from
mechanical thoughts and resignation, so exacting, inquiring, agitated,
tormented, would the world which was created to receive the beings which
we now are, have been this unpleasant little dwelling place for poor
fools, this salad plot, this rocky wooded and spherical kitchen garden
where your improvident Providence had destined us to live naked, in
caves or under trees, nourished on the flesh of slaughtered animals, our
brethren, or on raw vegetables nourished by the sun and the rain?

"But it is sufficient to reflect for a moment, in order to understand
that this world was not made for such creatures as we are. Thought,
which is developed by a miracle in the nerves of the cells in our brain,
powerless, ignorant and confused as it is, and as it will always remain,
makes all of us, who are intellectual beings, eternal and wretched
exiles on earth.

"Look at this earth, as God has given it to those who inhabit it. Is it
not visibly and solely made, planted and covered with forests, for the
sake of animals? What is there for us? Nothing. And for them,
everything, and they have nothing to do but to eat, or go hunting and
eat each other, according to their instincts, for God never foresaw
gentleness and peaceable manners; He only foresaw the death of creatures
which were bent on destroying and devouring each other. Are not the
quail, the pigeon and the partridge the natural prey of the hawk? the
sheep, the stag and the ox that of the great flesh-eating animals,
rather than meat that has been fattened to be served up to us with
truffles, which have been unearthed by pigs, for our special benefit?