When we see the authors of the different systems, concerning the formation of the world, reject the idea of a God, under the pretext, that this idea is foreign to the nature of our perceptions, should we not have a right to expect some better substitute for it? But, far from answering our expectations, they abandon themselves to all the wanderings of the most fantastic imagination. In fact, whether we refer the origin of the universe to the effect of hazard, the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or whether we establish another hypothesis derived from the same principle, it is necessary at least to suppose the eternal existence of an innumerable multitude of little particles of matter, placed without order in the immensity of space; and to suppose, afterwards, that these atoms, disseminated to infinity, attracted each other, and corresponded by the inherent properties of their nature; and that there resulted, from their adhesion, not only organized, but intelligent faculties; it is necessary, in short, to suppose, that all those incomprehensible atoms have been settled with admirable order through the effect of a blind motion, and by the result of some of the possible chances in the infinity of accidental combinations. Indeed, after so many suppositions without example or foundation, that of an Intelligent Being, soul and director of the universe, had been more analogous and more consonant with our knowledge. Let us return to the hypothesis we have just mentioned. We shall then recognize the trifling habit of the mind; it is accustomed to proceed from simple to compound ideas, every time it meditates, invents, or executes: thus, by an inverse method, the composers of systems have thought, that, in order to connect the universe to its origin, it was sufficient to detach, by the exercise of thinking, all its parts, and to break and subdivide them afterwards to infinity; but whatever may be the tenuity of these atoms, their existence, having organized and intellectual properties, which we should be obliged to grant them, would be a wonder almost equal to those phœnomena which surround us. When we see a plant grow, embellished with different colours, we only think of the period when its vegetation may be perceived by our senses; but the seed of this plant, or if you like better, the organized atoms, the first principle of this seed, would have offered also a grand subject of admiration, if we had been endowed with the faculties necessary to penetrate into the occult secrets of nature. But perhaps, in transforming into an imperceptible powder all the parts of matter, which have been collected to compose the world, we have only before our eyes a fugitive vapour, to which even our imagination cannot reach; and those who unfortunately love and defend this admiration, find besides, in the system of divisible atoms, means to defer, according to their fancy, the moment of their astonishment.