The hypothesis of God, far
from being weakened, is strengthened and established by the very
divergence and opposition of faiths.
An argument of another sort is that which is drawn from the order
of the world. In regard to this I have observed that, nature
affirming spontaneously, by the voice of man, its own distinction
into mind and matter, it remained to find out whether an infinite
mind, a soul of the world, governs and moves the universe, as
conscience, in its obscure intuition, tells us that a mind
animates man. If, then, I added, order were an infallible sign
of the presence of mind, the presence of a God in the universe
could not be overlooked.
Unfortunately this IF is not demonstrated and cannot be. For, on
the one hand, pure mind, conceived as the opposite of matter, is
a contradictory entity, the reality of which, consequently,
nothing can attest. On the other hand, certain beings ordered in
themselves--such as crystals, plants, and the planetary system,
which, in the sensations that they make us feel, do not return us
sentiment for sentiment, as the animals do--seeming to us utterly
destitute of conscience, there is no more reason for supposing a
mind in the centre of the world than for placing one in a stick
of sulphur; and it may be that, if mind, conscience, exists
anywhere, it is only in man.
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