that he does to discover those which disquiet him, or by which he is
afflicted. Thus, in reflecting upon the Divinity, it was generally upon
the cause of his evils that man meditated; his meditations were
fruitless, because the evil he experiences, as well as the good he
partakes, are equally necessary effects of natural causes, to which his
mind ought rather to have bent its force, than to have invented
fictitious causes of which he never could form to himself any but false
ideas; seeing that he always borrowed them, from his own peculiar
mariner of existing, acting, and feeling. Obstinately refusing to see
any thing, but himself, he never became acquainted with that universal
nature of which he constitutes such a very feeble part.

The slightest reflection, however, would have been sufficient to
undeceive him on these erroneous ideas. Everything tends to prove that
good and evil are modes of existence that depend upon causes by which a
man is moved; that a sensible being is obliged to experience them. In a
nature composed of a multitude of beings infinitely varied, the shock
occasioned by the collision of discordant matter must necessarily
disturb the order, derange the mode of existence of those beings who
have no analogy with them: these act in every thing they do after
certain laws, which are in themselves immutable; the good or evil,
therefore, which man experiences, are necessary consequences of the
qualities inherent to the beings, within whose sphere of action he is
found. Our birth, which we call a benefit, is an effect as necessary as
our death, which we contemplate as an injustice of fate: it is of the
nature of all analogous beings to unite themselves to form a whole: it
is of the nature of all compound beings to be destroyed, or to dissolve
themselves; some maintain their union for a longer period than others;
some disperse very quickly, as the ephemeron; some endure for ages, as
the planets; every being in dissolving itself gives birth to new beings;