The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
may be deemed impossible of cure.
Let not man, then, accuse Nature with being inexorable to him, since
there does not exist in her whole circle an evil for which she has not
furnished the remedy, to those who have the courage to seek it, who have
the fortitude to apply it. Nature follows general and necessary laws
in all her operations; physical calamity and moral evil are not to
be ascribed to her want of kindness, but to the necessity of things.
Physical calamity is the derangement produced in man's organs by
physical causes which he sees act: moral evil is the derangement
produced in him by physical causes of which the action is to him a
secret. These causes always terminate by producing sensible effects,
which are capable of striking his senses; neither the thoughts nor the
will of man ever shew themselves, but by the marked effects they
produce either in himself or upon those beings whom Nature has rendered
susceptible of feeling their impulse. He suffers, because it is of the
essence of some beings to derange the economy of his machine; he enjoys,
because the properties of some beings are analogous to his own mode of
existence; he is born, because it is of the nature of some matter to
combine itself under a determinate form; he lives, he acts, he thinks,
because it is of the essence of certain combinations to maintain
themselves in existence by given means for a season; at length he dies,
because a necessary law prescribes that all the combinations which are
formed, shall either be destroyed or dissolve themselves. From all this
it results, that Nature is impartial to all its productions; she submits
man, like all other beings, to those eternal laws from which she has
not even exempted herself; if she was to suspend these laws, even for
an instant, from that moment disorder would reign in her, system; her
harmony would be disturbed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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