ave formed this universe.

Who will believe that so perfect a poem as Homer's "Iliad" was not the
product of the genius of a great poet, but that the letters of the
alphabet, being confusedly jumbled and mixed, were by chance, as it were
by the cast of a pair of dice, brought together in such an order as is
necessary to describe, in verses full of harmony and variety, so many
great events; to place and connect them so well together; to paint every
object with all its most graceful, most noble, and most affecting
attendants; in short, to make every person speak according to his
character in so natural and so forcible a manner? Let people subtilise
upon the matter as much as they please, yet they never will persuade a
man of sense that the "Iliad" was the mere result of chance. How, then,
can a man of sense be induced to believe, with respect to the universe,
what his reason will never suffer him to believe in relation to the
"Iliad"?

_II.--EARTH, THE MOTHER OF ALL LIVING_

After these comparisons, about which I only desire the reader to consult
himself, without any argumentation, I think it is high time to enter
into a detail of nature. I do not pretend to penetrate through the
whole. Who is able to do it? Neither do I pretend to enter into any
physical discussion. Such way of reasoning requires a certain deep
knowledge, which abundance of men of wit and sense never acquire; and
therefore I will offer nothing to them but the simple prospect of the
face of nature. I will entertain them with nothing but what everybody
knows, which requires only a little calm and serious attention.

Let us, in the first place, stop at the great object that first strikes
our sight--I mean the general structure of the universe. Let us cast our
eyes on this earth that bears us.

Who is it that hung and poised this motionless globe of the earth? Who
laid its foundation? Nothing seems more vile and contemptible, for the
meanest wretches tread it under foot; but yet it is in order to possess
it that we part with the greatest treasures. If it were harder than it
is, men could not open its bosom to cultivate it; and if it were less
hard it could not bear them, and they would sink everywhere as they do
in sand, or in a bog. It is from the inexhaustible bosom of the earth we
draw what is most precious. That shapeless, vile, and rude mass assumes
the most various forms, and yields alone, by turns, all the goods we can
desire. That dirty soil