(44.) A mite has eyes; it turns aside if it meets objects that can hurt it; place it on a flat piece of ebony, so that people may see it better, and if, while it is walking, but the smallest piece of straw is put in its way, it will alter its course immediately. Do you think its crystalline fluid, its retina, and its optic nerve are the products of chance? Let pepper lie in water a little time, and be well steeped in it; then view a single drop of it with a microscope, and an almost countless number of animalculæ will be perceived, moving about with incredible agility, like so many monsters in the vast ocean; each of these animalculæ is a thousand times smaller than a mite, and yet it is a living body, receiving nourishment, growing, having muscles, and even vessels performing the functions of veins, nerves, and arteries, and a brain for the distribution of its animal spirits.[889] A speck of mould, though no bigger than a grain of sand, appears through a microscope like a collection of many distinct plants, of which some are plainly seen to bear flowers and other fruits; some have buds only, partly opened, and others are withered. How extremely small must be the roots and fibres through which these little plants receive their nourishment! And if a person considers that these little plants bear their own seed as well as oaks or pines, or that the animalculæ I was speaking of are multiplied by generation as well as elephants or whales, whither will not such observations lead? Who can have made things so fine and so exceedingly small as to be imperceptible to the naked eye, and which, like the heavens, border upon the infinite, though in the other extreme? Is it not the same Being who has created, and moves with so much facility, the heavens and the stars, those vast bodies so terrible in their dimensions, their altitude, celerity, and revolutions? (45.) Man enjoys the sun, the stars, the heavens and their influences, as much as he does the air he breathes, and the earth on which he treads and by which he is supported. This is a matter of fact; and if every fact were to be illustrated by fitness and verisimilitude, they could be deduced from them, as the heavens and all they contain are not to be compared for grandeur and dignity to one of the meanest men on earth, there being the same proportion between them and him as there is between matter destitute of sensation, a mere space having three dimensions, and a spiritual, reasonable, and intelligent being.[890] If people argue that less would have served for the preservation of man, I reply that it is not too much to display the power, the goodness, and the magnificence of God, as He could do infinitely more than He has done, whatever we perceive He has done.