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
Order, then, is nothing but necessity, considered relatively to the
series of actions, or the connected chain of causes and effects, that
it produces in the universe. What is the motion in our planetary system;
but a series of phenomena, operated upon according to necessary laws,
that regulate the bodies of which it is composed? In conformity to these
laws, the sun occupies the centre; the planets gravitate towards it, and
revolve round it, in regulated periods: the satellites of these planets
gravitate towards those which are in the centre of their sphere of
action, and describe round them their periodical route. One of these
planets, the earth which man inhabits, turns on its own axis; and by the
various aspects which its revolution obliges it to present to the sun,
experiences those regular variations which are called SEASONS. By a
sequence of the sun's action upon different parts of this globe, all its
productions undergo vicissitudes: plants, animals, men, are in a sort of
morbid drowsiness during _Winter_: in _Spring_, these beings re-animate,
to come as it were out of a long lethargy. In short, the mode in
which the earth receives the sun's beams, has an influence on all its
productions; these rays, when darted obliquely, do not act in the same
manner as when they fall perpendicularly; their periodical absence,
caused by the revolution of this sphere on itself, produces _night_ and
_day_. However, in all this, man never witnesses more than necessary
effects, flowing from the nature of things, which, whilst that remains
the same, can never be opposed with propriety. These effects are owing
to gravitation, attraction, centrifugal power, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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