It is undoubtedly true. The more I reflect on the subject, the more clearly I perceive that you are only the art of some Great Being, extremely powerful and skilful, who conceals Himself and exhibits you. All the reasoners, from the time of Thales, and probably long before him, have been playing at hide and seek with you. They have said, "I have hold of you"; and they in fact held nothing. We all resemble Ixion: he thought he embraced Juno, when he embraced only a cloud. NATURE. Since I am the whole that exists, how is it possible for a being like you, so small a portion of myself, to comprehend me? Be contented, my dear little atomic children, with seeing a few particles that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating for a few moments in my bosom, and at last dying without any knowledge of your mother and your nurse. PHILOSOPHER. My beloved mother, pray tell me a little why you exist--why anything has existed? NATURE. I will answer you in the language in which I always have answered, for so long a series of ages, those who have interrogated me on the subject of first principles: "I know nothing at all about the matter." PHILOSOPHER. Nothing itself, would it not be preferable to that multitude of existences formed to be continually dissolved; those tribes of animals born and reproduced to devour others, and devoured in their turn; those numberless beings endued with sensation, and formed to experience so many sensations of pain; and those other tribes of reasoning beings which never, or at least only rarely, listen to reason? For what purpose, Nature, was all this? NATURE. Oh! pray go and inquire of Him who made me. NECESSARY--NECESSITY. OSMIN. Do you not assert that everything is necessary? SELIM. If all be not necessary, it follows that God does unnecessary things. OSMIN. That is to say, it was necessary for the Divine Nature to do what it has done. SELIM. I believe, or at least I suspect so. There are men who think differently. I do not understand them; but possibly they are right. I fear to dispute on this subject. OSMIN. It is, however, necessary for me to talk to you upon it. SELIM. In what manner? Would you speak of what is necessary to sustain life, or the evil to which people are reduced who cannot procure it? OSMIN. No; for that which is necessary to one is not always necessary to another. It is necessary for an Indian to possess rice, for an Englishman to eat animal food, as Russians must wear furs, and Africans gauze. One man believes that he has need of a dozen coach-horses, another limits himself to a pair of shoes, and a third walks gayly on his bare feet. I wish to speak to you of that which is necessary to all men. SELIM. It appears to me that God has given us all that is necessary in this sense: eyes to see, feet to walk, a mouth to eat, a gullet to swallow, a stomach to digest, a brain to reason, and organs to produce our kind. OSMIN.