Is it of His own substance that
He has arranged all things? I have no idea. Is He immense without
quantity and without quality? I have no idea. All that I know is that
one must worship Him and be just.
NEW OBJECTION OF A MODERN ATHEIST[4]
Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are
these needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that,
of the infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been
able to subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment
and continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of
necessity?
ANSWER
This objection, oft-repeated since Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by
the gift of sensation in animals, and by the gift of intelligence in
man. How should combinations "which chance has produced," produce this
sensation and this intelligence (as has just been said in the preceding
paragraph)? Without any doubt the limbs of animals are made for their
needs with incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it.
You say no more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to
this great argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of
a fly's wing, a snail's organs suffices to bring you to the ground.
MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION
Modern natural philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments,
often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency.
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