Nevertheless, if the order of the world can tell us nothing as to
the existence of God, it reveals a thing no less precious
perhaps, and which will serve us as a landmark in our
inquiries,--namely, that all beings, all essences, all phenomena
are bound together by a totality of laws resulting from their
properties, a totality which in the third chapter I have named
FATALITY or NECESSITY. Whether or not there exists then an
infinite intelligence, embracing the whole system of these laws,
the whole field of fatalism; whether or not to this infinite
intelligence is united in profound penetration a superior will,
eternally determined by the totality of the cosmic laws and
consequently infinitely powerful and free; whether or not,
finally, these three things, fatality, intelligence, will, are
contemporary in the universe, adequate to each other and
identical,--it is clear that so far we find nothing repugnant to
these positions; but it is precisely this hypothesis, this
anthropomorphism, which is yet to be demonstrated.
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