agent, or some secret energy, which for want of being acquainted with
Nature, they have placed out of herself.

The phenomena of nature necessarily breed various sentiments in man:
some he thinks favorable to him, some prejudicial, while the whole is
only what it can be. Some excite his love, his admiration, his
gratitude; others fill him with trouble, cause aversion, drive him to
despair. According to the various sensations he experiences, he either
loves or fears the causes to which he attributes the effects, which
produce in him these different passions: these sentiments are
commensurate with the effects he experiences; his admiration is
enhanced, his fears are augmented, in the same ratio as the phenomena
which strikes his senses are more or less extensive, more or less
irresistible or interesting to him. Man necessarily makes himself the
centre of nature; indeed he can only judge of things, as he is himself
affected by them; he can only love that which he thinks favorable to his
being; he hates, he fears every thing which causes him to suffer: in
short, as we have seen in the former volume, he calls confusion every
thing that deranges the economy of his machine; he believes all is in
order, as soon as he experiences nothing but what is suitable to his
peculiar mode of existence. By a necessary consequence of these ideas,
man firmly believes that the entire of nature was made for him alone;
that it was only himself which she had in view in all her works; or
rather that the powerful cause to which this nature was subordinate, had
only for object man and his convenience, in all the stupendous effects
which are produced in the universe.

If there existed on this earth other thinking beings besides man, they
would fall exactly into similar prejudices with himself; it is a
sentiment founded upon that predilection which each individual