have perceived in the little space we are permitted to inspect. The author of a celebrated work accuses men of presumption, because, when they endeavour to trace the first principle of things, by comparing their own faculties with it, they seem to think that they approach it. But, what other part should we be able to take, when we are called to reason and to judge? It is not sufficient that the idea of the Supreme Being may be metaphysical; it is necessary further, some will argue, that we even try to render it abstract, by removing it out of our imagination, and that we seek for, in our judgment and opinions, a support which may be in a manner absent from ourselves, and absolutely foreign to our nature. All this cannot be understood: we confess that we have not sufficient strength to know the essence and perfection of God, but giving way to abstraction, we extinguish our natural light, and deprive ourselves of the few means we have to obtain this knowledge; we can only be acquainted with unknown things by the help of those we know: we shall be led astray, if we are obliged to take another road; and modern philosophers often seek to attack intimate sentiments by arbitrary ideas, of which an imagination the most capricious is the only foundation. It will then always be surprizing, that in our contemplations and habits of thinking, the wisdom of the design, the harmony of the whole, and the perfection of parts, are manifest traces of intelligence; and yet that we should renounce, suddenly, this manner of feeling and judging, in order to attribute the formation of the universe to the effect of chance, or the eternal laws of blind necessity; and is it possible, that we can deduce the same consequences from an admirable order, as from wild confusion? Facts so different, principles so contrary, should not lead to the same conclusion; the magnificent system of the universe ought to have some weight, when we conjecture about its origin; and it would be difficult to persuade us, that in investigating the most exalted truths, we ought to consider all the knowledge we acquire by the view of nature as merely indifferent. Men are carried very far, when they reject the arguments drawn from final causes; it is not only a single thought they would destroy, it is the source of all our knowledge they would dry up.