This prejudice conducted them straightway to another, which was, that all the judgments of God were incomprehensible; and that consequently they were beyond the cognizance of truth, and above the strength of human reason; a mistake which would have existed at the present day, if mathematical knowledge, natural philosophy, and other sciences had not extinguished it. § 6. There is no necessity for a long dissertation to prove that nature never aims at any definite end, and that all these final causes are only human fictions. It is sufficient to show that this doctrine deprives the Deity of all the perfections which have been attributed to him; and this we will endeavor to do. If God acts for an end, either for himself or for any other being, he desires that which he does not possess; and it must be granted from these premises that, as there was a time when God had no object for which to act, he wished to have one; that is to say, that he stood in need of something. But not to overlook anything which may strengthen the arguments of those who maintain the opposite opinion, suppose, for a moment, that a stone detached from a battlement fell upon an individual and killed him; it proves, say our opponents, that this stone fell for the purpose of killing this person, because it could not so have happened unless God had wished it. If we reply that it was the wind which caused its fall at the time when the unfortunate individual was passing, they demand at once, how it happened that he was passing exactly at the time when the wind brought down the stone. We answer, that he was on his way to dine with a friend who had invited him; they wish to know why his friend had invited him on that day rather than on any other. They put in this manner an infinitude of absurd questions to force you to confess that the will of God alone (which is the refuge of the ignorant) was the real cause of the fall of this stone. When they examine the structure of the human body, they fall into ecstacies; but because they are ignorant of the causes of those effects which appear to them so marvellous, they conclude that it must be a supernatural effect, when the causes which are known to us account for it. This is the reason why the man who wishes deeply to examine the works of creation, and like a true philosopher to penetrate into their natural causes, irrespective of those prejudices which ignorance has created, is branded as an infidel, or speedily clamoured down by the malice of those whom the vulgar acknowledge as the interpreters of Nature and of the Gods. These mercenary spirits are well aware that the ignorance which holds the people in wonderment, is that which gives them bread, and upholds their credit. § 7.