LUCRETIUS.—I can easily answer your objections by saying that there have always been motion and intelligence in the world. This motion and this intelligence have been distributed at all times according to the laws of nature. Matter being eternal, it must necessarily have been in some order; but it could not be put into any order without thought and motion; and therefore thought and motion must have always been inherent in it. POSIDONIUS.—Do what you will, you can at best but make suppositions. You suppose an order; there must, therefore, have been some intelligent mind who formed this order. You suppose motion and thought before matter was in motion, and before there were men and thoughts. You must allow, that thought is not essential to matter, since you dare not say that a flint thinks. You can oppose nothing but a _perhaps_ to the truth that presses hard upon you. You are sensible of the weakness of matter, and are forced to admit a supreme intelligent and almighty being, who organized matter and thinking beings. The designs of this superior intelligence shine forth in every part of nature, and you must perceive them as distinctly in a blade of grass, as in the course of the stars. Everything is evidently directed to a certain end. LUCRETIUS.—But do you not take for a design what is only a necessary existence? Do you not take for an end what is no more than the use which we make of things that exist? The Argonauts built a ship to sail to Colchis. Will you say that the trees were created in order that the Argonauts might build a ship, and that the sea was made to enable them to undertake their voyage? Men wear stockings: will you say that legs were made by the Supreme Being in order to be covered with stockings? No, doubtless; but the Argonauts, having seen wood, built a ship with it, and having learned that the water could carry a ship, they undertook their voyage. In the same manner, after an infinite number of forms and combinations which matter had assumed, it was found that the humors, and the transparent horn which compose the eye, and which were formerly separated in different parts of the body, were united in the head, and animals began to see. The organs of generation, dispersed before, were likewise collected, and took the form they now have; and then all kinds of procreation were conducted with regularity. The matter of the sun, which had been long diffused and scattered through the universe, was conglobated, and formed the luminary that enlightens our world. Is there anything impossible in all this?