"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and, as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration, are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact, to our own weakness and ignorance." See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and "God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of Nature." SECTION II. If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go by the name of a final-cause-finder--in plain language, fool--to the end of my life. All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk, nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them, and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny nature--the great existence, the universal intelligence--what they conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.