All these fantastic combinations serve only to lead us astray in our researches; and I do not think it a matter of indifference to make a general observation. The study of the first elements, of all the sciences which we acquire, such as geometry, languages, civil legislation, and several others, appear to us the simplest parts of our instruction. It is not the same, when we seek to know the laws of the physical world; for the works of nature never appear more simple than in their compounded state; they are then, to our mind, that which harmony is to the ear; it is the agreement of all parts which forms a union perfectly proportioned to our intelligence. Thus, man, for example, that wonderful alliance of so many different faculties, does not astonish our understanding, but appears to us in one point of view, a simple idea; but we are troubled, and, as it were, dismayed, when we try to analyze him, or mount to the elements of his liberty, will, thought, and all the other properties of his nature. We only advance towards infinity, and consequently towards the most profound darkness, when we destroy the world in order to divide it into atoms, out of the midst of which we make it issue afresh, after having rallied all we have dispersed. Let us admit, for a moment, that there exists organized and intelligent atoms, and that they are such, either by their nature, or by their adhesion to other atoms. We are now, of all these scattered atoms, to compose the universe, that master-piece of harmony, and perfect assemblage of every beauty and variety, that inexhaustible source of every sentiment of admiration; and in rejecting the idea of a God, creator and preserver, we must have recourse to the power of chance, that is to say, to the effects of an unknown continual motion, which, without any rule, produces, in a limited time, all the combinations imaginable; but, in order to effect an infinite variety of combinations, it is not only necessary to admit a continual motion, but besides, to suppose this continual motion changes its direction in all the parts of space subject to its influence. The existence of such a change, and a similar diversity in the laws of motion, is a new supposition which may be ranked with the other wild ones. However, after these chimerical systems have been granted, we are not freed from the difficulties which the notion of the formation of the world by a fortuitous concourse of atoms produces. It is difficult to comprehend how particles of matter, agitated in every manner, and susceptible, as has been supposed, of an infinity of different adhesions, should not have formed such a mixture, such a contexture, as would have rendered, the harmonious composition of the universe in all its parts, impossible.