This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and, after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle. The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption, circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage, there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself. It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill. Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and, above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up. It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work, to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order, formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds, having made all for the best, could not have made anything better. FICTION. Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it, begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into the water.