THE MIND OF AN AGE:
SCIENCE AND RELIGION CONFRONT EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NATURAL DISASTER

Because of the tremendous loss of life and damage to property that great natural disasters, like earthquakes and floods, inflict on their victims, such events require some explanation for their survivors.  What was the reason for the disaster?  Why did it occur where it did?  In the answers that the thinkers of an age propose for such questions we may find indications of the general thought patterns that characterize a particular era in history.

In the late twentieth century, for example, most of us would understand earthquakes scientifically, as the result of pressures along geological faults that occasionally produce cataclysmic movements of the earth's surface.  Earlier ages often understood earthquakes in terms of supernatural action.  The eighteenth century, the focus of this chapter, is an age whose intellectual life we may investigate with particularly rewarding results.  We will find that the intellectual life of this century illustrates the persistence of traditional thought patterns increasingly challenged by a new, scientific vision of the physical world.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Europe approached the culmination of an intellectual revolution that had been underway since the sixteenth century.  Scientific discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which your textbook describes as the Scientific Revolution, produced a wholly new outlook on the physical world that gained increasing acceptance among educated Europeans.  The result of the sixteenth- and seventeenth century work of Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton, and others was a growing certainty that the physical world could be understood through the ability of human reason to discern immutable mathematical laws that governed it.  No longer did intellectuals explain the world in terms of supernatural action. The physical world increasingly appeared to be a great machine, and many eighteenth-century thinkers, called Deists in their religious outlook, posited a novel relationship between God and the physical world.  The movements of the world machine might have been created by God, but Deists believed that they could not be interrupted by Him.  Some thinkers also had faith that a divine plan governed the world, affirming that all would be well.  But all agreed that nothing happened in such a world without sufficient cause or reason.  This was a true revolution in thought, espoused by intellectuals called philosophes, who sought to apply their faith in the existence of reasonable and comprehensible natural laws to all aspects of the human experience.  Their efforts in this regard constitute the intellectual milieu that historians call the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.

The Enlightenment's concept of a machine-like universe contradicted much in the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God.  Most important, perhaps, Enlightenment thought precluded any belief in divine intervention in the physical world.  Miracles or divinely ordained disasters, for example, simply were impossible for the philosophes because they violated natural laws of cause and effect.  Traditional religious beliefs, however, were not without their defenders.  Often these defenders were clergymen who, using the same tools of reason employed by the Enlightenment's exponents, strongly disagreed with the philosophes.  In Catholic Europe, members of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, were important defenders of traditional beliefs; in France they even published an influential monthly journal for their cause, the Journal de Trevoux.  Clergymen in Protestant countries also espoused traditional beliefs concerning a divine presence in the world.

Debate between the proponents of these differing visions of the world's relationship to God had been underway for years before a major earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755 forced Western thinkers to focus closely on the problem of explaining the causes of natural disasters.  The Lisbon earthquake particularly captured the attention of Western thinkers because it struck a major political capital and international trading center close to Europe's heart. It, moreover, was quite destructive . 2  The earthquake struck the Portuguese capital on November 1, 1755, All Saints' Day.  At 9:30 A.M. on that holy day, which obligates Roman Catholics like the inhabitants of Lisbon to attend mass in commemoration of all of the church's saints, a loud rumbling disturbed a peaceful morning marked by religious observance or preparation for church attendance.  Then three great seismic shocks rocked the city and ended its citizens' religious devotions.  Churches and homes alike tumbled during this earthquake whose shocks were felt as far away as Switzerland and northern France, and many persons perished.  Other disasters resulting from the earthquake soon increased the loss of life.  Fires spread from the hearths of the damaged city and burned for almost a week before they could be extinguished.  The trembling of the earth created ocean waves fifteen to twenty feet high that swept up the Tagus River on which Lisbon is situated and broke over the city's waterfront.  The combined destruction of earthquake, fires, and tidal waves left about 10,000 to 15,000 dead on that holy day of November 1.

Natural disasters like that at Lisbon elicited explanations from theologians who sought the work of God's hand in the Portuguese capital.  The philosophes, however, differed markedly among themselves on the earthquake's significance.  By reading selections on the exchange of ideas quickened by the Lisbon earthquake, the background on how some of these ideas developed, and the later implications of these thoughts, you will gain a deeper understanding of eighteenth-century thought about God and His relationship to the world.  This was a key issue for the age, and one that was widely debated.  Examining it allows us to learn a great deal about the Enlightenment by posing basic questions to the sources presented in this chapter: 

1.        Other earthquakes of the period either struck on the fringes of the West, as in Jamaica in 1692 and Peru in 1746, or in isolated parts of Europe, as in Sicily in 1693.  The few that had occurred in major cities-like London's quakes of 1750 had been slight in comparison to Lisbon's.

2.        A number of twentieth-century earthquakes, for which we have accurate casualty counts, have clearly been more devastating.  For example, the quake that struck Yokohama, Japan, on September 1, 1923, took about 200,000 lives; another in Tangshan, China, on July 28, 1976, killed about 242,000 persons.

3.      Estimates on the earthquake toll vary greatly, ranging as high as 6o,ooo persons. T.D. Kendrick, the author of a modern study, The Lisbon Earthquake (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1957), accepts 10,000-15,000 as the probable number of dead, and, indeed, as the city's population was only about 275,000, the figure of 60,000 dead is difficult to accept.

Sources and Methods

The problem at hand presents you with questions in the history of ideas, or what historians call "intellectual history." For generations, intellectual historians wrote about the ideas of the past without asking a question that seems central to historians today: "Who, in a certain period, held a particular set of ideas?" More precisely, "How representative were these ideas of the society as a whole?" In other words, "How broad was the impact of these ideas in their own time?"

As your text probably notes, literacy was not widespread in eighteenth-century Europe, so that the majority of the continent's population never had access to the ideas of the Scientific Revolution or the Enlightenment.  Indeed, historians in recent years have come to recognize the persistence of a culture of the people, a popular culture, sometimes pre-Christian in its roots that coexisted with the ideas of the philosophes.  The intellectual world of the unlettered was one inhabited by witches and warlocks, in which people readily accepted supernatural explanations for physical phenomena.  Such people might be frightened almost to death by an earthquake, but they took little part in the discussion of its philosophical ramifications presented here.

If the majority of the population of eighteenth-century Europe had little or no access to the ideas we will examine, are those ideas still relevant to our study of the past?  The answer is certainly yes, though we must take care not to attribute the ideas to all persons.  We are discussing ideas that were current among the small, educated elite of the eighteenth century.  We must recognize, however, that this privileged group had tremendous influence in a societal and governmental system that accorded little role to anyone born outside that class.  Moreover, such persons were the opinion makers of their age.  Their ideas would have had considerable influence among those with some education among the middle classes.  Thus the thought of this minority of Europe's total population had an impact well outside the boundaries of the social group from which it arose and thus is quite worthy of study.

The evidence that follows has been chosen to present you with a broad sample of the thought of Europe's eighteenth-century intellectual elite and the background of its development.  The Lisbon earthquake raised the immediate problem of explaining the disaster.  This question involved large issues, chief among them the relationship of the physical world to God.  Did God intervene in the world's daily operation, as theologians argued?  Was He, as Deists said, like a watchmaker who created a world-machine and then stood back, letting it operate on its own?  Or was no divine hand at work in the world at all?  In reading these selections, you should gain an understanding of why the Lisbon disaster preoccupied so many eighteenth-century thinkers.

Sources 1 and 2 represent a tendency perhaps as old as humankind, that is, the attempt to explain natural phenomena in terms of supernatural or divine forces.  Source 1, "An Opinion on the True Cause of the Earthquake," was a pamphlet written by a Roman Catholic priest, the Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida (1689-1761).  Born in Italy, Malagrida spent much of his life in missionary work in Portugal's Brazilian colony and lived in Lisbon after 1754.  It is not insignificant that he was a Jesuit; the Society of Jesus was one of the most influential orders in the early modern Roman Catholic church.  The absolute loyalty of the Jesuits to the papacy, combined with their energy and preaching ability, had done much to stem the spread of sixteenth-century European Protestantism.  In subsequent centuries the order's excellent schools had strengthened Catholicism, as had the influence its members wielded as spiritual advisers to monarchs.  Malagrida in every way typified his order.  He was an excellent preacher, well connected at court, and consequently his attempt to justify the earthquake in theological terms had an impact in Catholic Portugal.  How did he account for the earthquake?

Source 2 is a sermon by John Wesley (1703-1791), one of the most influential English Protestant leaders of the eighteenth century.  Ordained a priest of the Church of England, Wesley experienced a religious conversion in 1738 that led him to found a new Protestant faith, Methodism.  In the eighteenth century Methodism represented a dynamic new faith, espousing an emotional and personal kind of religion that contrasted with the practices of both Catholics and traditional Protestant groups.

Wesley preached widely in the cause of his faith; he is estimated to have journeyed 50,000 miles in the course of delivering 40,000 sermons, often to large audiences.  Because many of his sermons were published in pamphlet form, he reached an even larger public than only those able to attend his sermons.  According to this influential Protestant clergyman, what was the cause of the Lisbon earthquake?  How might future earthquakes be avoided?

With Source 3 we encounter the thought of the Enlightenment.  Voltaire was the pen name of Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), one of the greatest of the philosophes and the author of Source 3. Born the son of a Parisian notary, Voltaire received a traditional education from French Jesuits but early developed an independence of thought and irreverence toward established creeds and institutions that plunged him into difficulties.  In 1717 the royal government imprisoned him for eleven months for alleged insults to the regent of France.  In 1726 his writings provoked the authorities once again, and he avoided a second, lengthy imprisonment by agreeing to leave France for an extended stay in England.  Voltaire remained in England more than two years.

The lack of official tolerance for Voltaire's early writings defined the theme that became a constant in his writings: the cause of toleration.  In England, he believed he found a much freer and more tolerant society than that in France, and his Letters Concerning the English Nation (published 1733) contrasted France very unfavorably with England.  The book also reflected the deep impact of the ideas of the English thinkers Newton and Locke on Voltaire.  He would go on to write an extensive popular version of Newtonian physics, Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (1736), but in the earlier work on England, excerpted in Source 3, we find a brief summary of Newton's thought.  What sort of world did Newton describe?  What was the relationship of God to this world?  In what ways does Voltaire express a Deistic interpretation of God's relationship to the physical world?

Source 4 is a passage from the poem "An Essay on Man" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), an English poet whose acquaintance Voltaire made during his English sojourn.  As a member of England's Roman Catholic minority, Pope was excluded from educational opportunities open to Protestants, and he was largely self-taught.  "An Essay on Man," published in 1734, is therefore remarkable as a summary of philosophical speculation of the day on God's relationship to the world described by Newton.  What is that relationship, according to Pope?  Why does Pope tell his readers to accept the world as they find it?

In Source 7 we encounter a rather different Voltaire from the man who discussed Newton.  In his "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, or An Examination of that Axiom “All Is Well,” published twenty years after Letters, we have the work of an older Voltaire, whose words reflect a growing doubt about the ideas of the early Enlightenment on the relationship of the physical world to God.  What is Voltaire's view of God's role in the physical world in this poem he wrote on receiving the news of the Lisbon disaster?  Why can Voltaire accept neither a theological explanation of the event nor the faith of some Deists that a divine plan dictated that all would work out for the best?  What possible implications for the later Enlightenment's views on God do you find in this work of the influential Voltaire?

Voltaire's Lisbon poem elicited a forceful response in the form of a letter from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).  Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Rousseau was the child of a mother who died shortly after his birth, and his subsequent haphazard upbringing was followed by a wandering life that permitted few lasting relationships.  His works, including The Social Contract, a work of political theory, and Emile, a work of educational philosophy, rank Rousseau among the eighteenth century's greatest thinkers.  But he was not part of the company of the philosophes and ultimately disassociated himself from them.  Rousseau's works glorify the simplicity to be found in nature, and in many ways he was a precursor of the Romantic movement in early nineteenth-century literature, which consciously sought to negate the Enlightenment. 

It was only natural for Rousseau, therefore, to have intellectual differences with Voltaire.  When he wrote his letter in 1755, however, Rousseau's great work was still in the future and he was as yet relatively unknown.  His letter to Voltaire, already an internationally known thinker, was thus rather audacious.  What does Rousseau find wrong in Voltaire's view of the Lisbon earthquake?  What relationship between God and humans does Rousseau express?

The author of Source 9, "The Essay on Miracles," was David Hume (1711-1776), a Scottish philosopher who lived for a time in France and who briefly befriended Rousseau. (Hume offered Rousseau a home when the latter was expelled from Bern, Switzerland, for his ideas.  Rousseau soon quarreled with Hume, however, as he did with many persons. Hume's thought reflects the Enlightenment search for hard, observable facts to justify conclusions, whether historical, philosophical, or theological.  Could Hume find evidence of the God of Malagrida and Wesley on one hand or of the God of Newton and the early Voltaire on the other?  According to Hume, is any divine scheme at work in the world?

If Hume represents the skepticism of the Enlightenment, Baron d'Holbach, a German-born nobleman who passed much of his life in France, perhaps reflects a logical culmination of Enlightenment thought about the physical world Source 10 presents an expression of Holbach's views in a selection from his most important work, The System of Nature, What room is there for a divinity in Holbach's view, which sees the world as an "uninterrupted succession of causes and effects" in which "matter always existed"?  Why do you think Holbach's contemporaries, including Voltaire, criticized his position as atheistic?

As you read these selections, you should be able to answer the central questions of this chapter: Why did the Lisbon Earthquake pose an intellectual crisis for eighteenth century thinkers? How did theologians explain the disaster? How did Enlightenment thinkers explain it? In what direction was their thought on the physical world and its relationship to divine forces leading them?

The Evidence:

1. Gabriel Malagrida, 'An Opinion on the True Cause of the Earthquake," 1756  

Source 1 from T. D. Kendrick, The Lisbon Earthquake (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957), PP. 137-138.  Translated by T. D. Kendrick.

Sources 1 and 2 represent a tendency perhaps as old as human kind: that is, the attempt to explain natural phenomena in terms of supernatural or divine forces.  Source 1, "An Opinion on the True Cause of the Earthquake," was a pamphlet written by a Roman Catholic priest, the Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida (1689-1761).  Born in Italy, Malagrida spent much of his life in missionary work in Portugal's Brazilian colony and lived in Lisbon after 1754.  It is not insignificant that he was a Jesuit; the Society of Jesus was one of the most influential orders in the early modern Roman Catholic church.  The absolute loyalty of the Jesuits to the papacy, combined with their energy and preaching ability, had done much to stem the spread of sixteenth-century European Protestantism.  In subsequent centuries the order's excellent schools had strengthened Catholicism, as had the influence its members wielded as spiritual advisers to monarchs.  Malagrida in every way typified his order.  He was an excellent preacher, well connected at court, and consequently his attempt to justify the earthquake in theological terms had an impact in Catholic Portugal.  How did he account for the earthquake?

Learn, Oh Lisbon, that the destroyers of our houses, palaces, churches, and convents, the cause of the death of so many people and of the flames that devoured such vast treasures, are your abominable sins, and not comets, stars, vapours and exhalations, and similar natural phenomena.  Tragic Lisbon is now a mound of ruins.  Would that it were less difficult to think of some method of restoring the place; but it has been abandoned, and the refugees from the city live in despair.  As for the dead, what a great harvest of sinful souls such disasters send to Hell!  It is scandalous to pretend the earthquake was just a natural event, for if that be true, there is no need to repent and to try to avert the wrath of God, and not even the Devil himself could invent a false idea more likely to lead us all to irreparable ruin.  Holy people had prophesied the earthquake was coming, yet the city continued in its sinful ways without a care for the future.  Now, indeed, the case of Lisbon is desperate.  It is necessary to devote all our strength and purpose to the task of repentance.  Would to God we could see as much determination and fervour for this necessary exercise as are devoted to the erection of huts and new buildings!  Does being billeted in the country outside the city areas put us outside the jurisdiction of God?4 God undoubtedly desires to exercise His love and mercy, but be sure that wherever we are, He is watching us, scourge in hand.

4. Many of Lisbon's citizens fled the danger of the city for the countryside and remained there in shacks and tents until the earthquake danger passed.

2. John Wesley, 'Some Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon,' 1755

Source 2 from The Works of John Wesley, vol. ii (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1958), pp. i-2, 6-7, 8, 11,

Source 2 is a sermon by John Wesley (1703-1791), one of the most influential English Protestant leaders of the eighteenth century.  Ordained a priest of the Church of England, Wesley experienced a religious conversion in 1738 that led him to found a new Protestant faith, Methodism.  In the eighteenth century Methodism represented a dynamic new faith, espousing an emotional and personal kind of religion that contrasted with the practices of both Catholics and traditional Protestant groups.

Wesley preached widely in the cause of his faith; he is estimated to have journeyed 50,000 miles in the course of delivering 40,000 sermons, often to large audiences.  Because many of his sermons were published in pamphlet form, he reached an even larger public than only those able to attend his sermons.  

Tua res agitur, paries quum proximus ardet.5 ("'Tis your own interest that calls, when flames invade your neighbor's walls."  Horace)

Thinking men generally allow that the greater part of modern Christians are not more virtuous than the ancient Heathens; perhaps less so; since public spirit, love of our country, generous honesty, and simple truth, are scarce anywhere to be found.  On the contrary, covetousness, ambition, various injustice, luxury, and falsehood in every kind, have infected every rank and denomination of people, the Clergy themselves not excepted.  Now, they who believe there is a God are apt to believe he is not well pleased with this.  Nay, they think, he has intimated it very plainly, in many parts of the Christian world.  How many hundred thousand men have been swept away by war, in Europe only, within half a century! 6 How many thousands, within little more than this, hath the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up!  Numbers sunk at Port-Royal, and rose no more!  Many thousands went quick into the pit at Lima!  The whole city of Catanea, in Sicily, and every inhabitant of it, perished together.7 Nothing but heaps of ashes and cinders show where it stood.  Not so much as one Lot escaped out of Sodom!8

And what shall we say of the late accounts from Portugal?  That some thousand houses, and many thousand persons, are no more! That a fair city is now in ruinous heaps!  Is there indeed a God that judges the world?  And is he now making inquisition for blood?  If so, it is not surprising, he should begin there, where so much blood has been poured on the ground like water! Where so many brave men have been murdered, in the most base and cowardly as well as barbarous manner, almost every day, as well as every night, while none regarded or laid it to heart.9 'Let them hunt and destroy the precious life, so we may secure our stores of gold and precious stones.” “O How long has their blood been crying from the earth!”  Yea, how long has that bloody House of Mercy, the scandal not only of all religion, but even of human nature, stood to insult both heaven and earth!  "And shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord?  Shall not my soul be avenged on such a city as this?" . . .

But alas! why should we not be convinced sooner, while that conviction may avail, that it is not chance which governs the world?  Why should we not now, before London is as Lisbon, Lima, or Catanea, acknowledge the hand of the Almighty, arising to maintain his own cause?  Why, we have a general answer always ready, to screen us from any such conviction: “All these things are purely natural and accidental; the result of natural causes.” But there are two objections to this answer: First, it is untrue: Secondly, it is uncomfortable.

First.  If by affirming, “All this is purely natural,” you mean, it is not providential, or that God has nothing to do with it, this is not true, that is, supposing the Bible to be true.  For supposing this, you may descant ever so long on the natural causes of murrain, winds, thunder, lightning, and yet you are altogether wide of the mark; you prove nothing at all, unless you can prove that God never works in or by natural causes.  But this you cannot prove; nay, none can doubt of his so working, who allows the Scripture to be of God.  For this asserts, in the clearest and strongest terms, that “all things” (in nature) “serve him;” that (by or without a train of natural causes) He “sendeth his rain on the earth;” that He “bringeth the winds out of his treasures,” and “maketh a way for the lightning and the thunder;” in general, that “fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfill his word.” Therefore, allowing there are natural causes of all these, they are still under the direction of the Lord of nature: Nay, what is nature itself, but the art of God, or God's method of acting in the material world? ...

A Second objection to your answer is, It is extremely uncomfortable.  For if things really be as you affirm; if all these afflictive incidents entirely depend on the fortuitous concourse and agency of blind, material causes; what hope, what help, what resource is left for the poor sufferers by them? ...

What defence do you find from thousands of gold and silver?  You cannot fly, for you cannot quit the earth, unless you will leave your dear body behind you.  And while you are on the earth, you know not where to flee to, neither where to flee from.  You may buy intelligence, where the shock was yesterday, but not where it will be to-morrow,-to-day.  It comes!  The roof trembles!  The beams crack!  The ground rocks to and fro!  Hoarse thunder resounds from the bowels of the earth!  And all these are but the beginning of sorrows.  Now, what help?  What wisdom can prevent, what strength resist, the blow?  What money can purchase, I will not say deliverance, but an hour's reprieve?  Poor honourable fool, where are now thy titles?  Wealthy fool, where is now thy golden god?  If any thing can help, it must be prayer.  But what wilt thou pray to?  Not to the God of heaven; you suppose him to have nothing to do with earthquakes.... But how shall we secure the favour of this great God?  How, but by worshipping him in spirit and in truth; by uniformly imitating Him we worship, in all his imitable perfections? without which the most accurate systems of opinions, all external modes of religion, are idle cobwebs of the brain, dull farce and empty show.  Now, God is love: Love God then, and you are a true worshipper.  Love mankind, and God is your God, your Father, and your Friend.  But see that you deceive not your own soul; for this is not a point of small importance.  And by this you may know: If you love God, then you are happy in God; if you love God, riches, honours, and the pleasures of sense are no more to you than bubbles on the water: You look on dress and equipage, as the tassels of a fool's cap; diversions, as the bells on a fool's coat.  If you love God, God is in all your thoughts, and your whole life is a sacrifice to him.  And if you love mankind, it is your own design, desire, and endeavour, to spread virtue and happiness all around you; to lessen the present sorrows, and increase the joys, of every child of man; and, if it be possible, to bring them with you to the rivers of pleasure that are at God's right hand for evermore.

5.        From the Roman poet Horace: "'Tis your own interest that calls, when flames invade your neighbor's walls."

6.        Intense warfare did mark the half-century preceding the earthquake.  The great Northern War (1700-1716) pitted Sweden against Russia.  In the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714), France and Spain fought against England, Holland, the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor, and most of the German states.  In the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735), Spain and France confronted Russia and the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor.  Almost all of Europe was involved in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in which France, Spain, Prussia, and a number of the German states fought England and Austria.  At the time Wesley wrote, fighting between English and French forces had already broken out in North America that would lead to the Seven Years War of 1756-1763.  And these were only the major wars!  Minor conflicts also raged.  One historian reckoned that all of Europe was at peace for only two years in the century spanning 1700-1800.

7.        Wesley refers here to the earthquakes of 1692, 1693, and 1746 mentioned in note 1.

8.        In the Bible's book of Genesis, chapters 11-14 and 19, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire because of their wickedness.  Abraham's nephew, Lot, a resident of Sodom, was warned of the destruction and escaped.

9.   In this sentence Wesley is referring to the executions resulting from trials by the Portuguese Inquisition.  The Inquisition was a system of Roman Catholic courts created to identify and judge heretics.  Like all continental European courts of the day, these courts could torture the defendant to gather evidence against him or her.  Civil, not church, authorities, however, executed sentences.

10.     precious stones: "Merchants who have lived in Portugal inform us that the King has a large budding filled with diamonds; and more gold stored up, coined and uncoined, than all the other monarchs of Europe.' [Wesley's note] This may or may not have been true, but Lisbon certainly received gold from New World mines and diamonds from mines discovered in the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the 1730s.

11.  House of Mercy: "The title which the Inquisition of Portugal (if not in other countries also) takes to itself." [Wesley's note]

3. Voltaire on Newtonian Physics, (1733)  

Source 3 from Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (Nezv York: Burt Franklin Reprints, 1974), pp. 65-66, 96-97, 100, 103, 105-l06.

With Source 3 we encounter the thought of the Enlightenment.  Voltaire was the pen name of Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), one of the greatest of the philosophes and the author of Source 3. Born the son of a Parisian notary, Voltaire received a traditional education from French Jesuits but early developed an independence of thought and irreverence toward established creeds and institutions that plunged him into difficulties.  In 1717 the royal government imprisoned him for eleven months for alleged insults to the regent of France.  In 1726 his writings provoked the authorities once again, and he avoided a second, lengthy imprisonment by agreeing to leave France for an extended stay in England.  Voltaire remained in England more than two years.

The lack of official tolerance for Voltaire's early writings defined the theme that became a constant in his writings: the cause of toleration.  In England, he believed he found a much freer and more tolerant society than that in France, and his Letters Concerning the English Nation (published 1733) contrasted France very unfavorably with England.  The book also reflected the deep impact of the ideas of the English thinkers Newton and Locke on Voltaire.  He would go on to write an extensive popular version of Newtonian physics, Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (1736), but in the earlier work on England, excerpted in Source 3, we find a brief summary of Newton's thought.  

Not long since, the trite and frivolous Question following was debated in a very polite and learned Company, viz. (namely) who was the greatest Man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, Cromwell, etc. Some Body answer'd, that Sir Isaac Newton excell'd them all.  The Gentleman's Assertion was very just; for if true Greatness consists in having receiv'd from Heaven a mighty Genius, and in having employ'd it to enlighten our own Minds and that of others; a Man like Sir Isaac Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand Years, is the truly great Man.  And those Politicians and Conquerors, (and all ages produce some) were generally so many illustrious wicked Men.  That Man claims our Respect, who commands over the Minds of the rest of the World by the Force of Truth, not those who enslave their Fellow Creatures; He who is acquainted with the Universe, not They who deface it....

The Discoveries which gain'd Sir Isaac Newton so universal a Reputation, relate to the System of the World, to Light, to Geometrical Infinites; and lastly to Chronology, with which he us'd to amuse himself after the Fatigue of his severer Studies.

I will now acquaint you (without Prolixity if possible) with the few Things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime Ideas.  With Regard to the System of our World, Disputes were a long Time maintained, on the Cause that turns the Planets, and keeps them in their Orbits; and on those Causes which make all Bodies here below descend towards the Surface of the Earth.

Having ... destroy'd the Cartesian Vortices,13 he despair'd of ever being able to discover, whether there is a secret Principle in Nature which, at the same Time, is the Cause of the Motion of all celestial Bodies, and that of Gravity on the Earth.  But being retir'd in 1666, upon Account of the Plague, to a Solitude near Cambridge; as he was walking one Day in his Garden, and saw some Fruits fall from a Tree, he fell into a profound Meditation on that Gravity, the Cause of which had so long been sought, but in vain, by all the Philosophers, whilst the Vulgar think there is nothing mysterious in it.  He said to himself, that from what height so ever, in our Hemisphere, those Bodies might descend, their Fall wou'd certainly be in the Progression discover'd by Galileo; 14 and the Spaces they run thro' would be as the Square of the Times.  Why may not this Power which causes heavy Bodies to descend, and is the same without any sensible Diminution at the remotest Distance from the Center of the Earth, or on the Summits of the highest Mountains; Why, said Sir Isaac, may not this Power extend as high as the Moon?  And in Case, its Influence reaches so far, is it not very probable that this Power retains it in its Orbit, and determines its Motion?  But in case the Moon obeys this Principle (whatever it be) may we not conclude very naturally, that the rest of the Planets are equally subject to it?  In case this Power exists (which besides is prov'd) it must increase in an inverse Ratio of the Squares of the Distances.  All therefore that remains is, to examine how far a heavy Body, which should fall upon the Earth from a moderate height, would go; and how far in the same time, a Body which should fall from the Orbit of the Moon, would descend.  To find this, nothing is wanted but the Measure of the Earth, and the Distance of the Moon from it.

This is Attraction, the great Spring by which all Nature is mov'd.  Sir Isaac Newton after having demonstrated the Existence of this Principle, plainly foresaw that its very Name wou'd offend; and therefore this Philosopher in more Places than one of his Books, gives the Reader some Caution about it.  He bids him beware of confounding this Name with what the Ancients call'd occult Qualities; but to be satisfied with knowing that there is in all Bodies a central Force which acts to the utmost Limits of the Universe, according to the invariable Laws of Mechanicks.

Give me Leave once more to introduce Sir Isaac speaking: . "The Spring that I discovered was more hidden and more universal, and for that very Reason Mankind ought to thank me the more.  I have discovered a new Property of Matter, one of the Secrets of the Creator; and have calculated and discovered the Effects of it.  After this shall People quarrel with me about the Name I give it." Vortices may be call'd an occult Quality because their Existence was never prov'd: Attraction on the contrary is a real Thing, because its Effects are demonstrated, and the Proportions of it are calculated.  The Cause of this Cause is among the Arcana 15 of the Almighty.

Procedes huc, & non amplius. Hither thou shalt go, and no farther

12.     Julius Caesar (102-44 B.C.) dominated Rome during the last years of the republic.  Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) Was the king of Macedonia who led the Greeks on wars of conquest to create an empire including modern Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and much of the Middle East to the borders of India.  Tamerlane (ca 1336-1405) was a Turkish chieftain who created an empire embracing parts of southern Russia, Turkey, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.  Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) led Parliament's armies against the king in the English Civil War.  After the king's defeat and execution, he ruled England as virtual dictator.

13.     Cartesian vortices: Ren6 Descartes (1546-i65o), a French philosopher and mathematician, accounted for planetary motion in terms of vortices, that is, a rapid movement of cosmic bodies in a fluid or ether around an axis.  Newtonian physics with its law of gravity dispensed with such theories.

14.     Galileo Galilei: Italian astronomer, mathematician, and physicist (i564-i642) whose work was an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.  He developed the mathematical explanation of the rates at which bodies fall to earth in his law of falling bodies.

15.  Arcana: secrets or mysteries.

4. From Alexander Pope, 'An Essay on Man," 1734  

Source 4 from A. W. Ward, editor, The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope (London: Macmillan, 1879), PP. 199-200.

Source 4 is a passage from the poem "An Essay on Man" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), an English poet whose acquaintance Voltaire made during his English sojourn.  As a member of England's Roman Catholic minority, Pope was excluded from educational opportunities open to Protestants, and he was largely self-taught.  "An Essay on Man," published in 1734, is therefore remarkable as a summary of philosophical speculation of the day on God's relationship to the world described by Newton.  

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal  frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart:
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph  that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee;
Submit.-In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.

16.        ethereal: heavenly.

17.     Seraph: one of the heavenly creatures hovering around the throne of God described in Isaiah 6.

7. From Voltaire, "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, or An Examination of that Axiom “All Is Well,” 1755  

Source 7 from Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, nouvelle edition, vol. 9 (Paris: Garnier, 1877), P. 470.  Translated by Julius R. Ruff.

In Source 7 we encounter a rather different Voltaire from the man who discussed Newton.  In his "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, or An Examination of that Axiom “All Is Well,” published twenty years after Letters, we have the work of an older Voltaire, whose words reflect a growing doubt about the ideas of the early Enlightenment on the relationship of the physical world to God.  

Oh, miserable mortals!  Oh wretched earth!
Oh, dreadful assembly of all mankind!
Eternal sermon of useless sufferings!
Deluded philosophers who cry, "All is well,"
Hasten, contemplate these frightful ruins,
This wreck, these shreds, these wretched ashes of the dead;
These women and children heaped on one another,
These scattered members under broken marble;
One-hundred thousand unfortunates devoured by the earth,
Who, bleeding, lacerated, and still alive,
Buried under their roofs without aid in their anguish,
End their sad days!
In answer to the half-formed cries of their dying voices,
At the frightful sight of their smoking ashes,
Will you say: “This is result of eternal laws
Directing the acts of a free and good God!”
Will you say, in seeing this mass of victims:
"God is revenged, their death is the price for their crimes?”
What crime, what error did these children,
Crushed and bloody on their mothers' breasts, commit?
Did Lisbon, which is no more, have more vices
Than London and Paris immersed in their pleasures?
Lisbon is destroyed, and they dance in Paris!

8. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Letter to Voltaire Regarding the Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake, August 18, 1756  

Source 8 from Theodore Bestermann, editor, Voltaire's Correspondence, vol 30 (Geneva: Institut et Musge Voltaire, 1958) Translated by Julius R. Ruff.

Voltaire's Lisbon poem elicited a forceful response in the form of a letter from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).  Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Rousseau was the child of a mother who died shortly after his birth, and his subsequent haphazard upbringing was followed by a wandering life that permitted few lasting relationships.  His works, including The Social Contract, a work of political theory, and Emile, a work of educational philosophy, rank Rousseau among the eighteenth century's greatest thinkers.  But he was not part of the company of the philosophes and ultimately disassociated himself from them.  Rousseau's works glorify the simplicity to be found in nature, and in many ways he was a precursor of the Romantic movement in early nineteenth-century literature, which consciously sought to negate the Enlightenment. 

It was only natural for Rousseau, therefore, to have intellectual differences with Voltaire.  When he wrote his letter in 1755, however, Rousseau's great work was still in the future and he was as yet relatively unknown.  His letter to Voltaire, already an internationally known thinker, was thus rather audacious.  

All my complaints are ... against your poem on the Lisbon disaster, because I expected from it evidence more worthy of the humanity which apparently inspired you to write it.  You reproach Pope and Leibnitz  with belittling our misfortunes by affirming that all is well, but you so burden the list of our miseries that you further disparage our condition.  Instead of the consolations that I expected, you only vex me.  It might be said that you fear that I don't feel my unhappiness enough, and that you are trying to soothe me by proving that all is bad.

Do not be mistaken, Monsieur, it happens that everything is contrary to what you propose.  This optimism which you find so cruel consoles me still in the same woes that you force on me as unbearable.  Pope's poem alleviates my difficulties and inclines me to patience; yours makes my afflictions worse, prompts me to grumble, and, leading me beyond a shattered hope, reduces me to despair....

“Have patience, man,” Pope and Leibnitz tell me, “your woes are a necessary effect of your nature and of the constitution of the universe.  The eternal and beneficent Being who governs the universe wished to protect you.  Of all the possible plans, he chose that combining the minimum evil and the maximum good.  If it is necessary to say the same thing more bluntly, God has done no better for mankind because (He) can do no better.”

Now what does your poem tell me?  “Suffer forever unfortunate one.  If a God created you, He is doubtlessly all powerful and could have prevented all your woes.  Don't ever hope that your woes will end, because you would never know why you exist, if it is not to suffer and die. . . .”

I do not see how one can search for the source of moral evil anywhere but in man.... Moreover ... the majority of our physical misfortunes are also our work.  Without leaving your Lisbon subject, concede, for example, that it was hardly nature that there brought together twenty-thousand houses of six or seven stories.  If the residents of this large city had been more evenly dispersed and less densely housed, the losses would have been fewer or perhaps none at all.  Everyone would have fled at the first shock.  But many obstinately remained ... to expose themselves to additional earth tremors because what they would have had to leave behind was worth more than what they could carry away.  How many unfortunates perished in this disaster through the desire to fetch their clothing, papers, or money? ...

There are often events that afflict us ... that lose a lot of their horror when we examine them closely.  I learned in Zadig 24 and nature daily confirms my lesson, that a rapid death is not always a true misfortune, and that it can sometimes be considered a relative blessing.  Of the many persons crushed under Lisbon's ruins, some without doubt escaped greater misfortunes, and ... it is not certain that a single one of these unfortunates suffered more than if, in the normal course of events, he had awaited [a more normal] death to overtake him after long agonies.  Was death [in the ruins] a sadder end than that of a dying person overburdened with useless treatments, whose notary 25 and heirs do not allow him a respite, whom the doctors kill in his own bed at their leisure, and whom the barbarous priests artfully try to make relish death?  For me, I see everywhere that the misfortunes nature imposes upon us are less cruel than those which we add to them....

I cannot prevent myself, Monsieur, from noting ... a strange contrast between you and me as regards the subject of this letter.  Satiated with glory ... you live free in the midst of affluence .26 Certain of your immortality, you peacefully philosophize on the nature of the soul, and, if your body or heart suffer, you have Tronchin 27 as doctor and friend.  You however find only evil on earth.  And I, an obscure and poor man tormented with an incurable illness, meditate with pleasure in my seclusion and find that all is well.  What is the source of this apparent contradiction?  You explained it yourself: you revel but I hope, and hope beautifies everything.

... I have suffered too much in this life not to look forward to another.  No metaphysical subtleties cause me to doubt a time of immortality for the soul and a beneficent providence.  I sense it, I believe it, I wish it, I hope for it, I will uphold it until my last gasp....

I am, with respect, Monsieur, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

20.     Voltaire wrote this poem on hearing the first news of the disaster.  Those first reports grossly exaggerated the number of deaths, as does the poem.

21.     Alexander Pope, whose "An Essay on Man" is Source 4 in this chapter.

22.     Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz: a German mathematician and philosopher (1646-1716), the author of Essays on Theodicy, in which he examined the origins of evil in the world.  Leibnitz saw the universe operating according to a divine plan and therefore this was the best of all possible worlds.  He was not a total optimist, however, because he recognized the existence of evil.  Incompletely understanding the thought of Leibnitz, Voltaire satirized him as a blind optimist in his novel Candide (1759).

23.     Pope's poem: "An Essay on Man."

a

  9. 9.   David Hume, “The Essay on Miracles,” 1748  

Source 9 from David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, i963), PP. 519-521, 524-526, 540-541

The author of Source 9, "The Essay on Miracles," was David Hume (1711-1776), a Scottish philosopher who lived for a time in France and who briefly befriended Rousseau. (Hume offered Rousseau a home when the latter was expelled from Bern, Switzerland, for his ideas.  Rousseau soon quarreled with Hume, however, as he did with many persons.) Hume's thought reflects the Enlightenment search for hard, observable facts to justify conclusions, whether historical, philosophical, or theological.  

There is, in Dr. Tillotson's 28 writings, an argument against the real presence 29 which is as concise, and elegant, and strong, as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little worthy of a serious refutation.  It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the Scripture or of tradition, is founded merely on the testimony of the Apostles, who were eyewitnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission.  Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion, is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony as in the immediate object of his senses.  But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in Scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the Scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence with them as sense, when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one's breast by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind, which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations.  I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures; for so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact, it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.  One who in our climate should expect better weather in any week of June than in one of December, would reason justly and conformably to experience; but it is certain that he may happen, in the event, to find himself mistaken.  However, we may observe that, in such a case, he would have no cause to complain of experience, because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty, by that contrariety of events which we may learn from a diligent observation.  All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes.  Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.  In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event.  In other cases he proceeds with more caution: he weighs the opposite experiments: he considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability.  All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence proportioned to the superiority.  A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reason according to the principle here explained, this subtraction with regard to all popular religions amounts to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion....

What we have said of miracles, may be applied without any variation to prophecies; and, indeed, all prophecies are real miracles, and as such, only can be admitted as proofs of any revelation.  If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven.  So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.  Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

26.        Voltaire had prospered from his publishings and also had invested well.  He owned property in Geneva, Switzerland, and a large estate at Ferney, France, on the Swiss border.

27.     Theodore Tronchin: a physician (1709-1781) of Geneva, Switzerland.  A pioneer in smallpox inoculation in Switzerland, he was a member of Voltaire's circle.

28.     Dr.  John Tillotson: Archbishop of Canterbury (1630-1694), that is, spiritual leader of the Church of England.

29.        real presence: the presence of Jesus Christ in the sacramental bread and wine of Christian Communion.

10.  From Paul-Henry Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, The System of Nature, 1770  

Source 10 from Paul-Henry Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, The System of Nature, translated by H. D. Robinson (Boston: J. P. Mendum, 1853), PP. viii-ix, 12-13, 15, 19-23.

If Hume represents the skepticism of the Enlightenment, Baron d'Holbach, a German-born nobleman who passed much of his life in France, perhaps reflects a logical culmination of Enlightenment thought about the physical world.  Source 10 presents an expression of Holbach's views in a selection from his most important work, The System of Nature, What room is there for a divinity in Holbach's view, which sees the world as an "uninterrupted succession of causes and effects" in which "matter always existed"?  Why do you think Holbach's contemporaries, including Voltaire, criticized his position as atheistic?

As you read these selections, you should be able to answer the central questions of this chapter: 

Preface

The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.  The pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual errour.  He resembles a child destitute of experience, full of idle notions: a dangerous leaven mixes itself with all his knowledge: it is of necessity obscure, it is vacillating and false:-He takes the tone of his ideas on the authority of others, who are themselves in errour, or else have an interest in deceiving him.  To remove this Cimmerian darkness,30 these barriers to the improvement of his condition; to disentangle him from the clouds of errour that envelop him, that obscure the path he ought to tread; to guide him out of this Cretan labyrinth 31  requires the clue of Ariadne 32 with all the love she could bestow on Theseus.  It exacts more than common exertion; it needs a most determined, a most undaunted courage-it is never effected but by a persevering resolution to act, to think for himself; to examine with rigour and impartiality the opinions he has adopted....

Man seeks to range out of his sphere: notwithstanding the reiterated checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the impossible; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world; and hunts out misery in imaginary regions.  He would be a metaphysician before he has become a practical philosopher.  He quits the contemplation of realities to meditate on chimeras.  He neglects experience to feed on conjecture, to indulge in hypothesis.  He dares not cultivate his reason, because from his earliest days he has been taught to consider it criminal.  He pretends to know his fate in the indistinct abodes of another life, before he has considered of the means by which he is to render himself happy in the world he inhabits: in short, man disdains the study of Nature, except it be partially....

The most important of our duties, then, is to seek means by which we may destroy delusions that can never do more than mislead us.  The remedies for these evils must be sought for in Nature herself; it is only in the abundance of her resources, that we can rationally expect to find antidotes to the mischiefs brought upon us by an ill-directed, by an over-powering enthusiasm.  It is time these remedies were sought; it is time to look the evil boldly in the face, to examine its foundations, to scrutinize its super-structure: reason, with its faithful guide experience, must attack in their entrenchments those prejudices to which the human race has but too long been the victim.  For this purpose reason must be restored to its proper rank,-it must be rescued from the evil company with which it is associated....

Truth speaks not to these perverse beings [the enemies of the human race]:-her voice can only be heard by generous minds accustomed to reflection, whose sensibilities make them lament the numberless calamities showered on the earth by political and religious tyranny-whose enlightened minds contemplate with horrour the immensity, the ponderosity of that series of misfortunes with which errour has in all ages overwhelmed mankind....

Of Nature

The civilized man, is he whom experience and social life have enabled to draw from nature the means of his own happiness; because he has learned to oppose resistance to those impulses he receives from exterior beings, when experience has taught him they would be injurious to his welfare.

The enlightened man, is man in his maturity, in his perfection; who is capable of pursuing his own happiness; because he has learned to examine, to think for himself, and not to take that for truth upon the authority of others, which experience has taught him examination will frequently prove erroneous....

It necessarily results, that man in his researches ought always to fan back on experience, and natural philosophy: These are what he should consult in his religion-in his morals-in his legislation-in his political government in the arts-in the sciences-in his pleasures-in his misfortunes.  Experience teaches that Nature acts by simple, uniform, and invariable laws.  It is by his senses man is bound to this universal Nature; it is by his senses he must penetrate her secrets; it is from his senses he must draw experience of her laws.  Whenever, therefore, he either fails to acquire experience or quits its path, he stumbles into an abyss, his imagination leads him astray....

Man did not understand that Nature, equal in her distributions, entirely destitute of goodness or malice, follows only necessary and immutable laws, when she either produces beings or destroys them, when she causes those to suffer, whose organization creates sensibility; when she scatters among them good and evil; when she subjects them to incessant change-he did not perceive it was in the bosom of Nature herself, that it was in her abundance he ought to seek to satisfy his wants; for remedies against his pains; for the means of rendering himself happy: he expected to derive these benefits from imaginary beings, whom he erroneously imagined to be the authors of his pleasures, the cause of his misfortunes.  From hence it is clear that to his ignorance of Nature, man owes the creation of those illusive powers under which he has so long trembled with fear; that superstitious worship, which has been the source of all his misery...

The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects; some of these causes are known to us, because they strike immediately on our senses; others are unknown to us, because they act upon us by effects, frequently very remote from their original cause....

Of Motion and Its Origin

   ... Observation and reflection ought to convince us, that every thing in Nature is in continual motion.... Thus, the idea of Nature necessarily includes that of motion.  But, it will be asked, from whence did she receive her motion?  Our reply is, from herself, since she is the great whole, out of which, consequently, nothing can exist....

If they [natural philosophers] had viewed Nature uninfluenced by prejudice, they must have been long since convinced, that matter acts by its own peculiar energy, and needs not any exterior impulse to set it in motion.  They would have perceived, that whenever mixed bodies were placed in a capacity to act on each other, motion was instantly engendered, and that these mixtures acted with a force capable of producing the most surprising effects.  If filings of iron, sulphur and water be mixed together, these bodies thus capacitated to act on each other, are heated by degrees, and ultimately produce a violent combustion.  If flour be wetted with water, and the mixture closed up, it will be found, after some little lapse of time, by the aid of a microscope, to have produced organized beings that enjoy life, of which the water and the flour were believed incapable: it is thus that inanimate matter can pass into life, or animate matter, which is in itself only an assemblage of motion.  Reasoning from analogy, the production of a man, independent of the ordinary means, would not be more marvellous than that of an insect with flour and water....

Those who admit a cause exterior to matter, are obliged to suppose, that this cause produced all the motion by which matter is agitated in giving it existence.  This supposition rests on another, namely, that matter could begin to exist; a hypothesis that, until this moment, has never been demonstrated by any thing like solid proof.  To produce from nothing, or the Creation, is a term that cannot give us the most slender idea of the formation of the universe; it presents no sense, upon which the mind can fasten itself.

Motion becomes still more obscure, when creation, or the formation of matter, is attributed to a spiritual being, that is to say, to a being which has no analogy, no point of contact, with it; to a being which has neither extent, nor parts, and cannot, therefore, be susceptible of motion, as we understand the term; this being only the change of one body relatively to another body, in which the body moved, presents successively different parts to different points of space.  Moreover, as all the world are nearly agreed that matter can never be totally annihilated, or cease to exist, how can we understand, that that which cannot cease to be, could ever have had a beginning?

If, therefore, it be asked, whence came matter? it is a very reasonable reply to say, it has always existed....

Let us, therefore, content ourselves with saying that which is supported by our experience, and by all the evidence we are capable of understanding; against the truth of which, not a shadow of proof such as our reason can admit, has ever been adduced; which has been maintained by philosophers in every age; which theologians themselves have not denied, but which many of them have upheld; namely, that matter always existed; that it moves by virtue of its essence; that all the phenomena of Nature is ascribable to the diversified motion of the variety of matter she contains; and which, like the phoenix ,33 is continually regenerating out of her own ashes.

30.     Cimmerian darkness: in Greek mythology, the Cimmerians were a people inhabiting a land of perpetual darkness.

31.     Cretan labyrinth: according to Greek mythology, there existed on the island of Crete a structure of winding passages leading to a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, the Minotaur.  This monster was annually fed seven young men and seven young women from Athens as that city's tribute to the rulers of Crete

31.     Ariadne: daughter of the King of Crete, fell in love with Theseus, an Athenian hero and one of the youths sent by Athens to be offered to the Minotaur.  Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread which he unwound as he penetrated the labyrinth and there killed the Minotaur.  He then followed the thread back out of the labyrinth.

32.  phenix: the common modern spelling is "phoenix." In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix was a large bird, living a life span Of 500 to 600 years in the Arabian desert.  At the end of its life the phoenix was consumed in fire and from its ashes a new phoenix arose.