The world is assuredly an
admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable
intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the
worse for that.
All living bodies are composed of levers, of pulleys, which function
according to the laws of mechanics; of liquids which the laws of
hydrostatics cause to circulate perpetually; and when one thinks that
all these beings have a perception quite unrelated to their
organization, one is overwhelmed with surprise.
The movement of the heavenly bodies, that of our little earth round the
sun, all operate by virtue of the most profound mathematical law. How
Plato who was not aware of one of these laws, eloquent but visionary
Plato, who said that the earth was erected on an equilateral triangle,
and the water on a right-angled triangle; strange Plato, who says there
can be only five worlds, because there are only five regular bodies:
how, I say, did Plato, who did not know even spherical trigonometry,
have nevertheless a genius sufficiently fine, an instinct sufficiently
happy, to call God the "Eternal Geometer," to feel the existence of a
creative intelligence? Spinoza himself admits it. It is impossible to
strive against this truth which surrounds us and which presses on us
from all sides.
REASONS OF THE ATHEISTS
Notwithstanding, I have known refractory persons who say that there is
no creative intelligence at all, and that movement alone has by itself
formed all that we see and all that we are.
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