these are destroyed in their turn; to execute the eternal, the immutable
laws of a nature that only exists by the continual changes that all its
parts undergo. Thus nature cannot be accused of malice, since every
thing that takes place in it is necessary--is produced by an invariable
system, to which every other being, as well as herself, is eternally
subjected. The same igneous matter that in man is the principle of life,
frequently becomes the principle of his destruction, either by the
conflagration of a city, the explosion of a volcano, or his mad passion
for war. The aqueous fluid that circulates through his machine, so
essentially necessary to his actual existence, frequently becomes too
abundant, and terminates him by suffocation; is the cause of those
inundations which sometimes swallow up both the earth and its
inhabitants. The air, without which he is not able to respire, is the
cause of those hurricanes, of those tempests, which frequently render
useless the labour of mortals. These elements are obliged to burst their
bonds, when they are combined in a certain manner; their necessary but
fatal consequences are those ravages, those contagions, those famines,
those diseases, those various scourges, against which man, with
streaming eyes and violent emotions, vainly implores the aid of those
powers who are deaf to his cries: his prayers are never granted; but the
same necessity which afflicted him, the same immutable laws which
overwhelmed him with trouble, replaces things in the order he finds
suitable to his species: a relative order of things which was, is, and
always will be the only standard of his judgment.

Man, however, made no such simple reflections: he either did not or
would not perceive that every thing in nature acted by invariable laws;
he continued stedfast in contemplating the good of which he was
partaker, as a favor; in considering the evil he experienced, as a sign
of anger in this nature, which he supposed to be animated by the same