2. Other arguers come unexpectedly across our path, and cry:
What is the use of these abstruse researches? There is no more
an infinite intelligence than a Providence; there is neither me
nor will in the universe outside of man. All that happens, evil
as well as good, happens necessarily. An irresistible ensemble
of causes and effects embraces man and nature in the same
fatality; and those faculties in ourselves which we call
conscience, will, judgment, etc., are only particular accidents
of the eternal, immutable, and inevitable whole.
This argument is the preceding one inverted. It consists in
substituting for the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient author
that of a necessary and eternal, but unconscious and blind,
coordination. From this opposition we can already form a
presentiment that the reasoning of the materialists is no firmer
than that of the believers.
Whoever says necessity or fatality says absolute and inviolable
order; whoever, on the contrary, says disturbance and disorder
affirms that which is most repugnant to fatality.
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