natural effects, without excepting even the general arrangement which has placed the earth, the air, the water, and the stars where we see them. Thus, the true cause of the world, and of the effect which it produces, is not different from the cause which has bestowed motion on particles of matter--whether at the same time that it assigned to each atom a determinate figure, as the Gassendists assert, or that it has only given to particles entirely cubic, an impulsion which, by the duration of the motion according to certain laws, makes it ultimately take all sorts of forms--which is the hypothesis of the Cartesians. Both the one and the other consequently agree, that if matter had been, before the generation of the present world, as Ovid describes, it would have been capable of withdrawing itself from chaos by its own necessary operation, without the assistance of God. Ovid may therefore be accused of two oversights--having supposed, in the first place, that without the assistance of the Divinity, matter possessed the seeds of every compound, heat, motion, etc.; and in the second, that without the same assistance it could extricate itself from confusion. This is to give at once too much and too little to both God and matter; it is to pass over assistance when most needed, and to demand it when no longer necessary." Ovid may still reply: "You are wrong in supposing that my elements originally possessed all the qualities which they possess at present. They had no qualities; matter existed naked, unformed, and powerless; and when I say, that in my chaos, heat was mingled with cold, and dryness with humidity, I only employ these expressions to signify that there was neither cold, nor heat, nor wet, nor dry, which are qualities that God has placed in our sensations, and not in matter. I have not made the mistakes of which you accuse me. Your Cartesians and your Gassendists commit oversights with their atoms and their cubic particles; and their imaginations deal as little in truth as my "Metamorphoses". I prefer Daphne changed into a laurel, and Narcissus into a flower, to subtile matter changed into suns, and denser matter transformed into earth and water. I have given you fables for fables, and your philosophers have given you fables for truth." PARADISE. There is no word whose meaning is more remote from its etymology. It is well known that it originally meant a place planted with fruit trees; and afterwards, the name was given to gardens planted with trees for shade. Such, in distant antiquity, were those of Saana, near Eden, in Arabia Felix, known long before the hordes of the Hebrews had invaded a part of the territory of Palestine.