It is not for us to enter here on the detail of all that is written on Moses. We speak of his laws in more than one place in this work. We will here confine ourselves to remarking how much we are astonished to see a legislator inspired by God; a prophet, through whom God Himself speaks, proposing to us no future life. There is not a single word in Leviticus, which can lead us to suspect the immortality of the soul. The reply to this overwhelming difficulty is, that God proportioned Himself to the ignorance of the Jews. What a miserable answer! It was for God to elevate the Jews to necessary knowledge--not to lower Himself to them. If the soul is immortal, if there are rewards and punishments in another life, it is necessary for men to be informed of it. If God spoke, He must have informed them of this fundamental dogma. What legislator, what god but this, proposes to his people wine, oil, and milk alone! What god but this always encourages his believers, as a chief of robbers encourages his troops, with the hope of plunder only! Once more; it is very pardonable for mere human reason simply to see, in such a history, the barbarous stupidity of the first ages of a savage people. Man, whatever he does, cannot reason otherwise; but if God really is the author of the Pentateuch, we must submit without reasoning. MOTION. A philosopher, in the neighborhood of Mount Krapak, argued with me that motion is essential to matter. "Everything moves," says he; "the sun continually revolves on its own axis; the planets do the same, and every planet has many different motions; everything is a sieve; everything passes through a sieve; the hardest metal is pierced with an infinity of pores, by which escapes a constant torrent of vapors that circulate in space. The universe is nothing but motion; motion, therefore, is essential to matter." "But, sir," said I to him, "might not any one say, in answer to what you have advanced: This block of marble, this cannon, this house, this motion, are not in motion; therefore motion is not essential?" "They do move," he replied; "they move in space together with the earth by the common motion, and they move so incontestably--although insensibly--by their own peculiar motion, that, at the expiration of an indefinite number of centuries, there will remain not a single atom of the masses which now constitute them, from which particles are detaching themselves every passing moment." "But, my good sir, I can conceive matter to be in a state of rest; motion, therefore, cannot be considered essential to it." "Why, certainly, it must be of vast consequence whether you conceive it to be, or conceive it not to be, in a state of rest. I still repeat, that it is impossible for it to be so." "This is a bold assertion; but what, let me ask you, will you say to chaos?"