God. Tertullian reports that when Thales was at the court of Croesus, this prince asked him for a clear and neat explanation of the Divinity. After several vague answers, the philosopher agreed that he had nothing satisfactory to say. Cicero heard about a similar remark by the poet Timonides: Hiero asked him what God was, and he promised to answer in a few days. When the deadline passed, he asked for another, and then still another; in the end, the king pressing him anxiously, he gave the simple answer: The more I examine the matter, the more I find it beyond my intelligence. One might conclude from the embarrassment of these two philosophers that there is scarcely any subject which merits more circumspection in our judgment than what concerns Divinity: it is inaccessible to our regard and cannot be unveiled, whatever care is taken. As St. Augustine says, “ God is a being about which people speak without being able to say anything, and who is higher than all definitions.”

The Church Fathers, especially those who lived in the four first centuries, used that same language. But however incomprehensible God may be, we should not infer that He is so in all respects: if He were, we would have no idea of Him and nothing to say. But we can and we ought to affirm of God : that He exists, that He has intelligence, wisdom, power, force, since He has given these prerogatives to His works; but He has these qualities to a degree that surpasses what we can conceive of them, having them 1) by His nature and by the necessity of His being, not by communication and by borrowing; 2) having them all together and gathered in a single very simple and indivisible being, and not by parts and dispersed, such as they are in creatures; 3) having them as in their source, whereas we only have them as emanations from the infinite, eternal and ineffable Being.

There is nothing easier than to know that there is a God , that this God has existed eternally, that it is impossible that He does not eminently have intelligence and all the good qualities that are found in creatures. The most crude and stupid man, however little he has deployed his ideas and exercised his mind, will easily recognize this as truth. Everything speaks to him highly in favor of Divinity. He finds it in himself and outside himself: 1) because he well knows that he is not the author of himself, and that to understand how he exists, it is necessary to resort to a sovereign hand that drew him from nothingness, and 2) beyond himself in the universe, which resembles a picture field where the perfect worker paints himself in his work, so much that the latter must be in his image; he cannot help but open his eyes and discover everywhere around him the traces of a powerful and boundless intelligence.

The eternal is his name, the world is his creation. – Racine

See Demonstration, Creation, etc.

Therefore M. Bayle vainly strives to prove that people cannot judge in the matter of God ’s existence. In effect, how does he prove this? By saying that the nature of God is a subject that the greatest philosophers have found obscure, and on which they have been divided. This gives him the opportunity to open a vast field of reflections at the expense of ancient philosophers, whose sentiments he ridicules. After having made all these excursions, he comes back to wondering whether it quite easy for man to know clearly what suits or does not suit an infinite nature; does it act necessarily or with the sovereign freedom of indifference? Does it know? Does it love? Does it hate u a pure and simple act the present, past and future, good and evil, or the same man who is successively righteous and sinning? Is it infinitely good? It must be, but then where does evil come from? It is immutable or does it change its resolutions inflected by our prayers? Does it have extension or is it an indivisible point? If it has no extension, where does extension come from? If it does, how immense is it? (See the article on Simonides in [Bayle’s] dictionary.)

Even among Christians, he adds, how are low and crude notions of Divinity formed? The subject in question is thus not so easy that you can merely open your eyes to know it. Some great philosophers have contemplated the heaven and stars their whole lives -without ceasing to believe that the God they recognize did not create the world and does not govern it.

It is easy to see that all this proves nothing. There is a great difference between knowing that there is a God and knowing His nature. I admit that the latter knowledge is inaccessible to our feeble lights, but I do not see why one cannot touch the former. It is true that the eternity of a prime being, who is infinity in relation to duration, cannot be understood in all it is; but everyone can and should understand that there exists some being in eternity; otherwise a being would have begun without having the principle of existence either within itself or outside itself, and this would be a first effect without a cause. Thus it is the nature of man to be forced by his reason to admit the existence of something that he does not understand; he well understands the need for this eternal existence, but he does not understand the nature of this being that necessarily exists, nor the nature of its eternity. He understands that it is but not what it is.

Therefore I say and maintain that the existence of God is a truth that nature has put into the minds of all men who have not studied so much as to refute the sentiment. Here we could well say that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

M. Bayle has attacked with all his strength this unanimous consent of nations, wanting to prove that there was no demonstrative proof of God ’s existence. He reduces the question to these three principles: first, that there is in the souls of all men an idea of divinity; second, that it is a preconceived and anticipated idea that is communicated by nature and not by education; and third, the consent of all nations is an infallible characteristic of the truth. Of these three principles only the last is related to questions at issue, while the two others are a matter of fact, for since the second is proved by the first, it is visible that to be sure the idea of a Divine Being is innate and does not come from education but from nature, then one must look throughout history whether all men are imbued with the opinion that there is a God . But these are the three principles that M. Bayle combats vigorously in his various thoughts on the comet. Here is a summary of his reasoning.

1. The consent of all people to recognize a God is impossible to clarify. Show me a map of the world: see how many countries remain to be discovered, and how vast are the Austral lands that are marked only as unknown. As long as I remain ignorant of what is thought in those places, I cannot be sure that all peoples of the earth have given the consent of which you speak. If I graciously concede that it should suffice for you to know the opinion of the peoples of the known world, then you will still be unable to give me entire certainty, for what will you say if I raise the objection of the atheistic peoples of whom Strabo spoke, and those that modern travelers have discovered in Africa and in America!

   Here is a new field of painful and inexhaustible research. It would still remain to examine whether someone had denied this existence. One would have to be informed of the number of these atheists; if they were people of intellect and were keen on meditation. We know that Greece was fertile with strong minds, and as one of our finest minds says, a cradle of arts and errors, and it did produce atheists, that it even punished some of them, which let it be said that many others would have declared their irreligion if they had been sure of impunity.

2. It is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to discern what comes from nature and what comes from education. You might want to answer, after having thought about it, that one discovers the vestiges of religion in children who have never been told that there is a God . Usually this is the way we begin to instruct them, as soon as they are capable of forming sounds and of stammering. This custom is praiseworthy, but it prevents verifying whether by themselves, under the sole impressions of nature, they would be led to recognize a God.
3. The consent of nations is not a characteristic mark of truth: 1) because it is not certain that the impressions of nature bear this characteristic of truth; and 2) because polytheism would thereby be permitted. Nothing dispenses us of examining whether that to which the nature of all men gives its consent is necessarily true.

In effect, if the consent of nations were of some force, it would prove more the existence of several false divinities than that of the true God . It is clear that Pagans considered divine nature as a species that had under it a great number of individuals, of which some were male and others female, and that peoples were imbued with this ridiculous opinion. So if we had to recognize the general consent of nations as a proof of truth, then we would have to reject the unity of God and embrace polytheism.

To respond to M. Bayle’s first objection ( see Atheism), he proves that there were never atheistic nations. Men, as long as they are men, meaning capable of sociability and reasoning, recognize a God . Even if I granted what I do not believe to be true, that atheism slipped in among a few barbarous and ferocious peoples, this would have no consequence: their atheism would have been negative at most, they were merely ignorant of God because they did not exercise their reason. So they should be placed on the level of children who live without reflection and who appear capable of only animal actions. Just as we should not conclude that it is not natural for man to guarantee himself from the actions of the air because there are savages who do not care about them at all, so we should not infer that because there are stupid and brutish people who draw no consequence from what they see, it is not natural for man to know the wisdom of a God , who acts in the universe.

One would equally easily overturn M. Bayle’s second objection. It is not as awkward as he supposes to discern whether the idea we have of God comes solely from education and not from nature. Here are the marks by which one can recognize this. The principles of education vary endlessly; the succession of eras, the changes in affairs, the various interests of people, the mixture of nations, the different inclinations of men, all change education and give rise to other maxims and establish other rules of honor and benevolence. But nature is similar in all men who are and have been; they feel pleasure, they desire esteem, they love themselves today as before. If then we find that this sentiment that there is a God has been conserved amid all these changes of society, what can we conclude, if not that this sentiment does not come from simple education, but it is founded upon some natural link that lies between this first truth and our understanding? Hence this principle that there is a God is an impression of nature.

I conclude that this is by no means the work of politics, ever changing and mobile at the whim of men’s various passions. It is not true – whatever Bayle says – that the magistrate-legislator is the first teacher of religion. To be convinced you merely have to glance at Greek and Roman antiquity and even barbarity; you will see that never did any legislator undertake to police a nation, however barbaric or ferocious it was, where no religion was found; on the contrary, we see that all legislators, from Thrace to the Americans, addressed the savage hordes who composed these nations, as speaking to them on the part of the gods they adored.

At last we come to the third objection, that appears to M. Bayle the strongest and most solid of the three. The first reason he brings to strip the general consent of nations of its weight and proof, is the most subtle. His argument is reduced to this enthymeme. The basis of our soul is spoiled and corrupt; hence the feelings inspired in us by nature should at the least appear suspect. I would never have believed that we should arm ourselves again illusion when it is a matter of believing there is a God . Let us distinguish two feelings, of which one always fools us, and the other never. One is the feeling of the man who thinks and who follows reason, and the other is the feeling of the man of cupidity and passions. The latter deceives reason because it precedes all the mind’s reflections, but the other never deceives him since it is from the purest light of reason that it draws birth. This stated, let us come to the argument that polytheism would have been authorized if the consent of nations were always marked on the seal of truth. I will not elucidate the point by saying that polytheism has never been universal, that the Jewish people were never infected with it, that all the Philosophers were persuaded of the existence of a single God , as well as those who were initiated into the great mysteries. I grant M. Bayle that polytheism has dominated all minds, except for a few philosophers, but I maintain that the feeling we have of the existence of God is not a universal error; here is my basis. There are two sorts of causes of our errors, some exterior and other interior. He puts in the first case: example, education, bad reasoning and the sophisms of discourse. The interior causes of our errors and prejudices are reduced to three: the senses, imagination and passions of the heart. If we examine the exterior causes of our errors, we find that they depend on circumstances, times and places, and thus vary perpetually. If one considers all the errors that reign and all those that have reigned among peoples, one will find that example, education, sophisms of discourse, or the false colors of eloquence have produced particular errors but not general errors. One may deceive some men, or deceive them all in certain places and times, but not deceive all men in all places and in all centuries; since the existence of God has filled all times and all places, it cannot have its source in the exterior causes of our errors. For the interior causes of our errors, as they are found in all men of the world and as each has senses, imagination and a heart that are capable of deceiving him, even if by accident and by the bad use that we make of then, they are able to give birth to constant and universal errors.

These observations lead to the solution to the difficulty drawn from polytheism. We easily conceive that polytheism has been able to become a universal error and consequently this unanimous consent of nations proves nothing in relation to it; the source has to be sought in the three interior causes of our errors. To take the senses, men made visible god s of them, invested them in human form. These beings had to be made like men; what other figure could they have? From the moment they had human figure, the imagination naturally attributed to them everything that is human: they were men in all respects, albeit a little more powerful than men. Read the origin of the fables of M. de Fontenelle, and you will see how the imagination, in concert with passions, gave birth to god s and god desses and soiled them with all sorts of crimes.

The existence of God being one of the first truths that forcefully overpowers any mind that thinks and reflects, it seems that the huge volumes written to prove this are useless and and somehow injurious to men — at least they should be. Bin finally, since impiety produces works everyday to destroy this truth, or at least to spread haze over it, those who are well intentioned by religion should employ all the sagacity of their minds to sustain it against all the attacks of irreligion.

To please all tastes, I here will join metaphysical, historical, and physical proofs of the existence of God . M. Clarke, through whose hands the most obscure and abstruse subjects cannot pass without acquiring evidence and order, will furnish us with metaphysical proofs. M. Jaquelot, a man of the world who has gathered the most knowledge and reasoning and who has best blended philosophy and criticism, will supply us with historical proofs. We will draw on the ingenious Fontenelle for physical proofs, but stripped of all the ornaments than minds can lend to a subject so dry and arid of itself.

Metaphysical arguments. The reasoning used by M. Clarke is tightly woven, a chain of closely linked propositions, necessarily dependent on each other, by which he demonstrates the certainty of the existence of God , and then he deduces one after the other the essential attributes of His nature that our circumscribed reason is capable of discovering.

First proposition . That something has existed in all eternity. This proposition is evident: since something exists today, it is clear that something has always existed.

Second proposition . That an independent and immutable being has existed in all eternity. In effect, if some being has necessarily existed in all eternity, it is necessary either that this being is immutable and independent or that there was an infinite succession of dependent beings subject to change, which were produced one after the other in an infinite progression, without having any original cause for their existence. But this latter supposition is absurd, for this gradation to infinity is impossible and visibly contradictory. If one envisages this progress to infinity as an infinite chain of dependent beings that relate to each other, it is evident that all this assemblage of beings could have no external cause for its existence since it presupposes that all the beings that are and have been in the universe would enter into it. It is evident, on the other hand, that there can be no interior cause of its existence, because in this infinite chain of beings there is not one that does not depend on the preceding one. But if none of these parts necessarily exists it is clear that all cannot necessarily exist, since the absolute necessity existing is not a exterior, relative and accidental trait of the being that necessarily exists. An infinite succession of dependent beings, without original and independent cause, is therefore the most impossible thing in the world.

Third proposition. That this immutable and independent being that has existed throughout all eternity also exists by itself, for everything that exists either came out of nothingness, without having been produced by any cause whatever, or it was produced by some exterior cause, or it exists by itself. But it is a formal contradiction to say that a thing came out of nothingness without having been produced by any cause. Moreover, it is not possible for all that exists to be produced by exterior causes, as we have just proved. From this third proposition I conclude: 1) that one cannot deny without manifest contradiction, the existence of a being that exists necessarily and by itself; given the necessity by virtue of which it exists to be absolute, essential and natural, one cannot deny its existence, any more than the relation of equality between these two numbers, two times two is four, than the roundness of a circle, or the three sides of a triangle.

The second consequence that I draw from this principle is that the material world cannot be this prime, original, uncreated, independent and eternal being-by-itself; for it has been demonstrated that any being that has existed throughout eternity, that is independent and has no exterior cause, must have existed by itself, must necessarily exist by virtue of a natural and essential necessity. From all that, it evidently follows that the material world cannot be independent and eternal by itself — unless it exists necessarily, and of a necessity so absolute and so natural that the very supposition that it does not exist would be a formal contradiction; for the absolute necessity of existing and the possibility of not existing being contradictory ideas, it is evident that the material world does not necessarily exist, if I can without contradiction conceive that either it could not be, or that it could be quite other than it is today. Yet nothing is easier to conceive; either I consider the form of the universe with the disposition and movement of its parts, or I pay attention to the matter of which it is composed, and I see nothing other than the arbitrary; I find in truth a necessity of convenience; I see that its parts must have been arranged; but I do not see the least relation of this to the necessity of nature and essence fought for by the Atheists. See Atheism and Creation.

Fourth proposition. That the being that exists-by-itself must be infinite and present everywhere. The idea of infinity or immensity, as well as that of eternity, is so closely tied to the idea of existence by itself that whoever poses one necessarily poses the other. In effect, to exist by itself is to exist by virtue of absolute, essential and natural necessity. But this necessity being in all respects absolute and not depending on any interior cause, it is evident that it is inalterably the same everywhere as well as always. Consequently all that exists by virtue of its absolute necessity is infinite as well as eternal. It is a manifest contradiction to suppose that a finite being might exist by itself. If without contradiction I may conceive of a being absent from a place, I may without contradiction conceive it as absent from another place, and finally from any place; thus whatever necessity of existing it has, it must have received from some exterior cause; it could not have drawn it from its own source and consequently it does not exist by itself.

From this principle avowed by reason, I conclude that the being existing by itself must be a simple, immutable and incorruptible being, without parts, without movement and without divisibility; in short, a being that encounters none of the properties of matter; for all the properties of matter necessarily give us the idea of something finite.

Fifth proposition . That the being existing by itself must necessarily be unique. The unity of the supreme being is a natural consequence of its necessary existence; for absolute necessity is simple and uniform, it recognizes neither difference nor variety of any kind; and any difference or variety of existence proceeds necessarily from some exterior cause on which it depends. Yet there is a manifest contradiction in supposing two or several different natures existing by themselves necessarily and independently; for if each of these natures is independent of the others, one can well suppose that each of them exists alone and there will be no contradiction in imagining that the other does not exist; hence it follows that neither one nor the other will necessarily exist. So there is only the simple and unique essence of the being existing by itself, which exists necessarily.

Sixth proposition. That the being existing by itself is an intelligent being. It is over this proposition that most of the dispute between Atheists and us takes place. I admit that it is not possible to demonstrate in a direct and a priori manner that the being existing by itself is intelligent and really active; the reason is that we do not know what intelligence consists of and we cannot see that there is between existence-by-itself and intelligence the same immediate and necessary connection that is found between this same existence and eternity, unity, infinity, etc. But a posteriori , there is nothing in this vast universe that does not show us this great truth and that does not furnish us with incontestable arguments that prove that the world and all it contains is an effect of a cause that is supremely intelligent and supremely wise.

1) The being existing-by-itself being the cause and original of all things, must possess to the highest degree of eminence all the perfections of all beings. It is impossible that the effect should cover any perfection that is not also found in the cause; if that were the case, we would have to say that this perfection would have been produced by nothing, which is absurd.

2) Beauty, variety, order and symmetry that burst in the universe, and especially the marvelous rightness with which each thing relates to its purpose, prove the intelligence of a Prime Being. The least plant and the vilest animal are produced by their like, there is in them no equivocal generation. Neither the sun nor the earth nor water nor all the powers of nature united together are capable of producing a single living being, not even vegetal life; and on the occasion of this important observation I will note here in passing that on the very subject of religion, natural and experimental philosophy are sometimes of a very great advantage.

Things being such that the most stubborn atheist must remain in accord, despite what he says, that either the organization of plant and animals is originally the work of an intelligent being who created them in time; or else having been for all eternity constructed and arranged as we see them today, they are the eternal production of an eternal and intelligent cause that constantly deploys its power and infinite wisdom; or else they are all born from all eternity, in an infinite progression of dependent causes, without an original cause existing by itself. The first of these assertions is precisely what we are looking for; the second amounts to the same thing and is no resource for the atheist; and the third is absurd, impossible, contradictory – as was demonstrated in the second general proposition. See Creation.

Seventh proposition. That the being existing-by-itself should be a free agent. If the supreme cause is without freedom and without choice, it is impossible for anything to exist; there would not be manners of being and circumstances to the existence of things, which could not have been in all respects precisely what they are today. But all these consequences being evidently false and absurd, we may say that the Supreme Cause, far from being a necessary agent, is a free being and acts by choice.

Moreover, the Supreme Cause being a purely necessary agent, it would be impossible for any effect of this cause to be a finite thing; for a being that acts necessarily is not master of its actions to govern them or to design them as he likes; he must by all necessity do what his nature is capable of doing. It is clear that each production of an infinite cause, always uniform and acting by blind impetuousness must by all necessity be immense and infinite; such a cause cannot suspend its action, it must act in all its extent. So there is no creative in the universe that can be finite, which is the height of absurdity and contrary to experience.

Finally the choice that the Supreme Cause has made among all possible worlds, of the world we see, is a proof of its freedom; for having given actuality to a series of things that in no way contribute by its own force to its existence, there is no reason that would prevent it from giving existence to other possible series, which were all in the same situation as regards possibility. So it chose the series of things that compose this universe; making it actual because it pleased it the most. The necessary being is thus a free being, for to act following the laws of one’s will is to be free. See Liberty, Optimism, etc.

Eighth proposition. That the being existing-by-itself, the supreme cause of all things, possesses infinite power. This proposition is evident and incontestable, for since there is only God alone who exists by Himself, since everything that exists in the universe was made by Him and because all the power in the world comes from Him and is perfectly subject and subordinate to Him, who does not see that there is nothing that might oppose the execution of his will?

Ninth proposition. That the Supreme Cause and author of all things must be infinitely wise. This proposition is a natural and evident result of the preceding propositions, for is it not very evident that a being that is infinite, present everywhere and supremely intelligent, must perfectly know all things? Clothed in infinite power, what can oppose His will or prevent him from doing what he knows to be best and wisest?

It evidently follows from these principles that the Supreme Being must always do what He knows is best, meaning he must always act in conformity with the most rigorous rules of goodness, truth, justice, and other moral perfections. This does not entail a necessity taken in the sense of the Fatalists, a blind and absolute necessity, but a moral necessity, compatible with the most perfect freedom. (See Manichaeism and Providence.)

Historical Arguments . Moses says that in the beginning God created the heaven and earth; he marks with precision the birth of the universe; he teaches us the name of the first man; he runs through the centuries from this first moment until the time when he was writing, passing from generation to generation, marking the years of the births and deaths of the men who serve his chronology. If it can be proved that the world has existed before the time marked in this chronology, we would be right to reject this history; but if we have no argument to attribute a more ancient existence to the world, it would be acting against good sense to not accept it.

When one reflects that Moses gave the world only about 2,410 years, according to the Hebrew, or 3,943 years according to the Greek, counting from the time when he wrote, it should not be astonishing that he extended the duration of the world so little, he must have been persuaded of this truth by invincible monuments.

That is not all: Moses marks for us a time in his history when all men spoke the same language. If before this time we find in the world different nations and inscriptions in different languages, then Moses’ supposition falls by itself. Since at the time of Moses, going back to the confusion of languages, in the Hebrew it says there were about ten centuries (and eleven according to the Greeks) so this can no longer be an absolutely unknown antiquity. It is no longer a matter of knowing whether in traversing back twelve centuries (at most), one may find in some place on earth the single language used among men, different from the primitive common language, which is claimed among the inhabitants of Asia. Let us examine the histories, monuments, archives of the world: do they overthrow Moses’ system and chronology, or do they concur in affirming its truth? In the former case, Moses is an imposter both coarse and odious; in the latter, his tale is incontestable, and consequently there is a God, since He was its creator. During the long duration of centuries that have passed until now, there have been countless authors who have dealt with the foundation of empires and cities, who wrote their general histories or the particular histories of peoples; those even of Assyrians and Egyptians, the two old nations, as we know. Yet with all this recourse to the depositories of the longest tradition, with a thousand others I do not mention, never have we been able to go back farther than the wars of Thebes and Troy, never have we been able to stop the mouths of philosophers who maintain the newness of the world.

With the legislator of the Jews, there appears in this world no vestige of the sciences, no shadow of the arts. Sculpture and Painting only reach by degrees the perfection to which they rose; the former in the time of Physidas, Polycletes, Lysippus, Miron, Praxiteles and Scopas, the latter through the works of Nicomachus, Protogenes, Appelus, Zeuxis and Aristides. Philosophy did not start to research until the 35 ^th OIympiad, when Thales was born, this great change, the era of a revolution in minds, does not have an older date. Astronomy among the most cultivated peoples made only very little progress and it was not even ancient among scholars who dared to say so. The proof is evident: although they had discovered the zodiac, although they had divided into twelve parts and 360 degrees, they still did not perceive the movement of the stars from west to east; they did not even suspect it, and they thought them immutably fixed. Could they have thought so if they had some ancient observations? They put the constellation of Aries into the zodiac precisely at the point of the spring equinox: another error. If they had observations for only 2,202 years, would they have not said that Taurus was the point of the equinox? Even letters, I mean the art of writing, were known by what people before Moses? Everything that we have from profane authors agrees that it was Cadmus who brought the alphabet from Phoenicia to Greece; the Phoenicians, as we know, were mixed with the Assyrians and Syrians, among who were also included the Hebrews. How does this relate to the world having a longer duration than Moses gave to it, and why did Greece remain in such a long infancy, knowing nothing about it, or not perfecting anything of what it had already found? We see that the Greeks in less than four hundred years became skillful and deep in the arts and sciences. Does this mean that the men of these four happy centuries had minds of another kind and were of a happier caliber than their ancestor?

One could say to M. Jacquelot, from whom this argument in drawn, that in confining himself to the knowledge and inventions of Greece, he approaches the issue from the side most advantageous to his cause and presupposes the prodigious antiquity of the empires of Assyria, Egypt, and even China. He also takes care to research (as an able critic) the origin of these nations and to show that they do not have (at least the first two) the antiquity given them by Moses. Those who agree that the Assyrian Empire is the oldest do not extend it beyond 1700 years. Justin gave it the space of thirteen centuries. Cresias adds only 60 years more; others give it only 1500 years. Eusebius gives it still narrower boundaries; Georges Syncelle thinks like Cresias. This means that even taking the least severe calculation, the Assyrians began only 1500 or 1600 years before J.C. and about five or six centuries before the first knowledge that history gives us of Greece.

With respect to Egypt, who would believe, supposing that it was as old as it claims to be, that Moses did not accommodate his history to the world’s chronology, that he exposed the falseness of his dates to the derision of a people so known to him, so able and so neighboring? Yet he makes [Egypt] descend from the cursed race of God ; saying so, he does not fear being quoted. It is a constant t in the profane annals that here was never a more celebrated people than the Egyptians. The city of Alexandria alone, having become the rendez vous of great talents, held within its walls (especially since the establishment of Christianity) scholars from all parts of the universe, from all religions and and all sects: Jews, Christians and Philosophers. Once could plausibly suspect that there were often disputes among them; for where there are scholars, there are soon contestations, and the truth itself is always defended with the arms that the human mind knows only too well how to employ in matters of doctrine. Here everything turned on the facts, depending on whether the universe, as Moses had said, was only 6000 years old at most; whether four centuries before him this same world had been drowned in the waters of a flood that spared only one family and whether it was true that three thousand years previously, there was on early only one language. What could be easier to clarify? We are on the same site; we could easily examine the temples, sepulchers, pyramids, obelisks, the ruins of Thebes, visit these famous Sciriadic columns; or as, Ammias Marcellin calls them, the subterranean syringes, where the sacred mysteries were engraved. We had to hand the annals of the priests, and finally we could consult histories which are numerous. Still, in the midst of so many resources against error, the facts posed with such confidence in the books of Moses did not find contradictors; one defies the criticism that dares name them.

Only Manethon, who lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus, uncovered a chronological history of Egypt from its first origin until the flight of Nectanebo to Ethiopia around the 177 ^th Olympiad. But what a history! And who could be fooled? He has reigning in Egypt six gods, ten heroes or demi-gods , for 31 or 32 thousand years; then he makes King Menes appear and composes the list of his successors over 340 monarchs, whose total duration is about three thousand years. Great men have tried in all eras to put some order into the confusion of this chaos and to untangle this monstrous pile of dynasties of gods, heroes, and princes , but the most stubborn study has shown only the powerlessness of these efforts and daylight has not yet penetrated these thick shadows. Were these dynasties successive or collateral? We do not know. Were the Egyptian years one month or two, as some have claimed? Impossible to determine from ancient testimony; they disagree too much. Our moderns are even less unanimous and despite the work of Scaliger, Father Petau, Chevalier Marsham, Father Pezron and others, Manethon’s chronology has remained a labyrinth from which we must despair of ever leaving.

One people remains, the Chinese, who seem to give the world a greater age than our Scriptures do. Since these regions have become better known to us, historical annals have been published that put the origin of this empire to about 3,000 years before the birth of J.C. This is a new problem that is often seized by those who do not believe in Moses’ chronology. In order to destroy this claim, M. Jacquelot makes various remarks that are important and solid about the uncertainty of Chinese history. But to decide the matter, he maintains that even conceding its calculations would not harm the veracity of our own. Nothing obliges us to prefer the Hebrew calculation to that of the Septuagint. In the latter, the age of the universe is greater than in the other. So in order to reconcile the Chinese dates with ours, since the Hebrew text brings in five more centuries, and since these five centuries were replaced (and more) in the Septuagint translation, the difficulty is lifted; and it is clear that the Empire of China was posterior to the flood. See Chronology.

Objection . According to the Latin summaries of the annals followed in China, the historical time of this empire begin with the reign of Hoamti 2697 years before J.C.; this era, which in the chronology of the Hebrew text is anterior to the flood by more than a century, is not found in the Septuagint calculation, later by only 200 years to both the dispersal of peoples and the birth of Phaleg. Now these 200 years, which at first seem a rather great base and resource capable of reconciling everything are in fact barely sufficient to lead the founders of the Chinese colony and their flocks from the plains of Sennaar to the Oriental extremes of Asia – and by what routes, through the frightful solitudes and almost inaccessible climates after the ravages of the general inundation?

M. Freret, one of the most scholarly men of our day and most versed in knowledge of that time, has felt the full force of this objection and responded. He saw that to resolve things it was necessary to pierce more than heretofore the shadows of Chinese chronology. He had the courage to enter and we owe him gratitude for having thrown daylight on it through his learned research. It is now proved – as much as possible – that this immense duration that the modern Chinese assign to the fabled time of their history is merely the result of astronomic periods invented to give the conjunction of planets in certain constellations. With respect to historical time, it is proved that the reins of Iao and Chum , the two founders of the Chinese monarchy, ended only 1,991 years before the Christian era, that these two reigns were at most 156 years, and therefore cannot have begun until around the year 2147, several years after the vocation of Abraham and the very time of the expedition of Elamites to the country of Canaan, meaning well after the establishment of the empires of Egypt and Chaldea. Thus the birth of the most ancient peoples of the world is brought back to its true epoch, Moses’ history is confirmed, the fact of the creation in established, and thereby the existence of the Supreme Being is invincibly demonstrated.

Physical argument . Animals perpetuate themselves only by means of generation, but the first two of each species must have been produced either by the fortuitous meeting of parts of matter or by the will of an intelligent being who disposes of matter according to its designs.

If the fortuitous meeting of portions of matter did produce the first animals, I ask why it did not produce more — and my whole argument rests on this point. At first, one will not have great difficulty answering: when the earth was formed, as it was full of living and acting atoms, impregnated in the same subtle way as the stars that had just been formed – in a word, young and vigorous, it could be fecund enough to push outside itself all the various species of animals and that after this first production that depended on so many happy and singular encounters, its fecundity might have been lost and exhausted. For example, we see everyday swamps that are newly dried up that all have enough force to produce again only fifty years after they were tilled. Now I claim that when the earth (according to supposition) produced animals, it must have been in the same state that it is presently. It is certain that the earth could only have produced animals when it was in a state to feed them, or at least it is certain that the first offshoots of each species were produced by the earth only when they could be fed. So, in order for the earth to furnish fresh water for them to drink, it was necessary for the air to have a certain degree of fluidity and heat for the animals, whose life is related to all these qualities, as is well-known.

As soon as one gives me an earth covered with all the species of plants necessary for the subsistence of animals, watered with springs and rivers able to quench their thirst, surrounded by air they can breathe, then one gives it to me in the state in which we see it; for these three things alone entail an infinity of others, with which they have relations and consequences. A bit of grass can grow only in concert, so to speak, with the rest of nature. It needs a certain sap in the earth, a certain movement in the sap, neither too strong or too slow; a certain sun to imprint this movement, a certain place where the sun can act. See how many relations are necessary, although they are not all noticed. The air could not have the qualities it contributes to animal life if it did not have in itself the same mixture of subtle matter and gross vapors, which causes its weight, a quality as necessary as any other in relation to animals and necessary in a certain degree for all the same actions. It is clear that this should lead us still farther, from equality to equality; especially all the springs and rivers that animals could not do without, having certainly no other origin than the rains. Animals could not have been born except after fall of rain, meaning a considerable time after the earth’s formation — consequently when it was in a state of consistency and when chaos – thanks to which some want to draw animals from nothingness, was entirely finished.

It is true that the newly dried swamps produce more than after some time has passed, but finally they always produce a little, and it would suffice for the earth to do as much. Moreover the more fecundity there is in the newly dried swaps, the greater the quantity of salts that they have amassed by the rains or the air’s movement and which they have conserved because they were not used for anything. But the earth always has the same quantity of corpuscles or atoms able to form animals, and fecundity, far from being lost, cannot diminish in any way. What is an animal formed of? An infinity of corpuscles that were scattered in the plants it ate, in the waters it drank, in the air it breathed; it is a composite of all the parts that came to be gathered from a thousand different places of our world; these atoms circulate ceaselessly, they form sometimes a plant, sometimes an animal; and after having formed one, they are no less suited to form another. So it is not atoms of a particular nature that produce animals; it is only an indifferent matter thast forms all things successively, and it is very clear that the quantity of them does not diminish, since it always furnishes them to all. It is claimed that the fortuitous meeting of atoms produced the first animals from the beginning of the world, but atoms are contained in this same matter, which makes all the generations of our world. For when these first animals died, the machines of their bodies disassembled and resolved themselves into parcels that were dispersed over the earth, waters, and in the air. Thus we still have today these precious atoms, from which surprising machines must have been formed; we still have them in the same quantity suitable to form these machines; they still form them everyday by means of food; all things are in the same state as when they came to form them by a fortuitous meeting. How can it happen that they do not still thus form them sometimes?

All animals, even those suspected of coming from either putrefaction or humid and heated dust, must come from seed that was not perceived. It has been discovered that scoters are formed of eggs of this species of birds found in desert islands of the north and never will they engender worms on meat where flies could not have left their eggs. The same is true of all the other animals that were thought to be born outside the path of generation. All modern experiments conspire to disabuse us of this old error and I am sure that shortly the slightest doubt will no longer remain. See Corruption.

But if doubt did remain, and there were animals that came outside the path of generation, my reasoning would only become stronger: Either these animals are born by this means of fortuitous encounter or by that of generation: if they are born from fortuitous encounters, why is there always found in matter a disposition that makes them born only in the same was as they were born at the beginning of the world? And why, with respect to all other animals that we suppose are born in that manner; are all the dispositions of matter so changed that they are always born in that different manner? If they are born by both fortuitous encounter and generation, why have not all other species of animals retained this double manner of being born? Why was the most natural manner, the only one conforming to the first origin of animals, lost to almost all species?

Another thought that fortifies the first one is that it was not sufficient for the earth to just produce animals when it was in a certain situation (in which it is no longer). It must also have produced them only it a state in which it could feed them with what it offered, for example producing the first man only at the age of one or two, when he could satisfy his needs, although with difficulty, and take care of himself. Given the weakness in which we see the newborn baby, we would not put it in the middle of the prairie covered with grass or near the best waters in the world – indubitably it could not live long. But how could the laws of movement producea child at the age of one or two years in the first place? How could they even produce him in the state he is presently when he comes into the world? We see that [laws] bring nothing except by degrees and that all works of nature – from the weakest and most distant beginnings – are slowly led by an infinity of changes that are quite necessary up to their ultimate perfection. If man is supposed to have been formed by the blind cooperation of some parts of matter, he must have begun by this atom in which life is not noticed except by the almost imperceptible movement of a point. I do not think that there is an imagination false enough to conceive from where this living atom, thrown by chance onto the earth, could have drawn blood or chyle that were fully formed, the only food that suits him, nor how he was able to grow when exposed to all the injuries in the air. There lies a difficulty that grows greater as it deepens, and the more will it take a skillful physician to delve into it. The chance meeting of atoms therefore could not have produced animals; these works must have started from the hand of an intelligent being, this is to say from God himself. The heavens and stars are the most striking objects for our eyes, but perhaps for reason they are not the surest signs of the activity of their author. The greatest works are not always those that speak most of their artisan. If I see a mountain flattened, I do not know whether it was done by the order of a prince or by an earthquake, but I will be certain it was by a prince’s order if I see a two-line inscription on a small column. It appears to me that animals bear, so to speak, the clearest inscription and they best teach us that there is a God as author of the universe. This line of reasoning, whose force and solidity may be reasonably vaunted, comes from M. de Fontenelle, as I have already said. ( This article is drawn from papers of M. Formey).