"How beautiful is nature!" said he; "how lovely in every season! how mild in spring! how gay in summer! how luxuriant in autumn! how grand in the winter storm! and yet to man the spring brings illness, the summer yields fatigue, the autumn demands his labour, and the winter sees his death! Miserable in the midst of perfection, desolate in the heart of plenty, and wretched is he, even in the moment of enjoyment. What is he but a mixture of clay rendered sensible to pain, and affections destined to be quelled in death? And yet this animated mass of earthly sorrow vainly pictures to himself a Being whom he calls all good, who sees his misery, yet will not alleviate it, and who gave him being but to render him unhappy. Can this thing be? No!--there is no God. It is but the monstrous imagination of man's own heart!" "What is there," answered the old man, "that has not a cause? And if each thing has a cause, all must have a cause; and that which was the cause of all, must have power over all, must love all, and protect all which it caused. And what is man, the insect of an hour, that he should say, I cannot understand, therefore I will not believe? Alli el Assur! (for by thy thoughts do I know thee,) listen to the words of experience--hearken to the voice of years--mark what I shall say to thee; for I am old, and thine own wisdom shall tell thee that my words are true! "Know then, that at the bottom of the sea there is a certain animal, whose size is so minute, that ten of them would stand upon the point of thy scimitar. This animal never stirs from the place of its birth; and the term of its life is shorter than the being of a butterfly. It so happened, that as insect of this kind fell, by chance, upon the back of one of those large amphibious creatures which sometimes betake themselves to the land, and thus it was carried within sight of the dwelling of man. When it returned to its companions of the ocean, it related all the wonders it had seen, but found no one to believe. "'Thou tellest us,' said one, 'that there is a being on the earth whose size is immense, and whose faculties are so wonderful, that all nature is open to his view; whose vast sight could comprehend the whole of this rock; and in short, whose senses are excellent in every particular: and yet thou sayest, that this being is stupid enough to move from place to place without being forced to do so and has the excessive folly to live on the land instead of dwelling in the sea, the natural element of all creatures existing. But granting even all that to be true, thou hast also said, that this great being builds himself a shell to creep into. Now, were he endowed with the powers you describe, he would of course, sit still at ease in one place, and enjoy the fluid that circulates round him, as we do. In this, as well as in a thousand other points, thy story is improbable and inconsistent, nor can we believe it, for our senses tell us it is not true.'