those unnatural mothers, who instantly forgetting the unfortunates
of their licentious love, abandon their infants, as soon as they
are born, and who, content with having borne them, expose them,
helpless, to the caprice of fortune.

The Hottentots, in this respect are much wiser than other nations,
who treat them as barbarians, and refuse to worship God; because,
they say, _if he often does good, he often does evil_. Is not this
manner of reasoning more just and conformable to experience, than
that of many men, who are determined to see, in their God, nothing
but goodness, wisdom, and foresight, and who refuse to see that
the innumerable evils, of which this world is the theatre, must
come from the same hand, which they kiss with delight?


54. Common sense teaches, that we cannot, and ought not, to judge
of a cause, but by its effects. A cause can be reputed constantly
good, only when it constantly produces good. A cause, which produces
both good and evil, is sometimes good, and sometimes evil. But the
logic of theology destroys all this. According to that, the phenomena
of nature, or the effects we behold in this world, prove to us the
existence of a cause infinitely good; and this cause is God. Although
this world is full of evils; although disorder often reigns in it;
although men incessantly repine at their hard fate; we must be convinced,
that these effects are owing to a beneficent and immutable cause;
and many people believe it, or feign believe.

Every thing that passes in the world, proves to us, in the clearest
manner, that it is not governed by an intelligent being. We can
judge of the intelligence of a being only by the conformity of the