"In regard to these two modes of execution, if observation taught us nothing we could not form any opinion which would be well grounded. But it is not so; we distinctly see that there exists an order of things truly created (_véritablement créé_), as unchangeable as its author allows, acting on matter alone, and which possesses the power of producing all visible beings, of executing all the changes, all the modifications, even the extinctions, so also the renewals or recreations that we observe among them. It is to this order of things that we have given the name of _nature_. The Supreme Author of all that exists is, then, the immediate creator of matter as also of nature, but he is only indirectly the creator of what nature can produce. "The end that God has proposed to himself in creating matter, which forms the basis of all bodies, and nature, which divides (_divise_) this matter, forms the bodies, makes them vary, modifies them, changes them, and renews them in different ways, can be easily known to us; for the Supreme Being cannot meet with any obstacle to his will in the execution of his works; the general results of these works are necessarily the object he had in view. Thus this end could be no other than the existence of nature, of which matter alone forms the sphere, and should not be that causing the creation of any special being. "Do we find in the two objects created, _i.e._, _matter_ and _nature_, the source of the good and evil which have almost always been thought to exist in the events of this world? To this question I shall answer that good and evil are only relative to particular objects, that they never affect by their temporary existence the general result expected (_prévu_), and that for the end which the Creator designed, there is in reality neither good nor evil, because everything in nature perfectly fulfils its object. "Has God limited his creations to the existence of only matter and nature? This question is vain, and should remain without an answer on our part; because, being reduced to knowing anything only through observation, and to bodies alone, also to what concerns them, these being for us the only observable objects, it would be rash to speak affirmatively or negatively on this subject. "What is a spiritual being? It is what, with the aid of the imagination, one would naturally suppose (_l'on vaudra supposer_). Indeed, it is only by means of opposing that which is material that we can form the idea of spirit; but as this hypothetical being is not in the category of objects which it is possible for us to observe, we do not know how to take cognizance of it. The idea that we have of it is absolutely without base.