All those different species are preserved much the same in all ages. We do not find that for three thousand years past any one has perished or ceased; neither do we find that any one multiplies to such an excess as to be a nuisance or inconveniency to the rest. If the species of lions, bears, and tigers multiplied to a certain excessive degree, they would not only destroy the species of stags, bucks, sheep, goats, and bulls, but even get the mastery over mankind, and unpeople the earth. Now who maintains so just a measure as never either to extinguish those different species, or never to suffer them to multiply too fast? But this continual propagation of every species is a wonder with which we are grown too familiar. What would a man think of a watchmaker who should have the art to make watches, which, of themselves, should produce others ad infinitum in such a manner that two original watches should be sufficient to multiply and perpetuate their species over the whole earth? What would he say of an architect that should have the skill to build houses, which should build others, to renew the habitations of men, before the first should decay and be ready to fall to the ground? It is, however, what we daily see among animals. They are no more, if you please, than mere machines, as watches are. But, after all, the Author of these machines has endowed them with a faculty to reproduce or perpetuate themselves ad infinitum by the conjunction of both sexes. Affirm, if you please, that this generation of animals is performed either by moulds or by an express configuration of every individual; which of these two opinions you think fit to pitch upon, it comes all to one; nor is the skill of the Artificer less conspicuous. If you suppose that at every generation the individual, without being cast into a mould, receives a configuration made on purpose, I ask, who it is that manages and directs the configuration of so compounded a machine, and which argues so much art and industry? If, on the contrary, to avoid acknowledging any art in the case you suppose that everything is determined by the moulds, I go back to the moulds themselves, and ask, who is it that prepared them? In my opinion they are still greater matter of wonder than the very machines which are pretended to come out of them.