Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well
beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is
clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to
right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a
well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not
see that that has had much influence on present affairs.

One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has
demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step
until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still
further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily
that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it
has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears
and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by
spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia
and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past
events: they have their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral
lines do not serve them at all. Once more, every being has a father, but
every being has not children.




_CONTRADICTIONS_


If some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of
contradictions, I subscribe for twenty folio volumes.

The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish