son; it
would be an effect without a cause. Therefore, God cannot have this
so-called liberty which is a contradiction in terms. He has therefore
always acted through this same necessity which makes His existence.

It is therefore impossible for the world to be without God, it is
impossible for God to be without the world.

This world is filled with beings who succeed each other, therefore God
has always produced beings who succeed each other.

These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient Oriental
philosophy and of that of the Greeks. One must except Democritus and
Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy combated these dogmas. But let us
remark that the Epicureans relied on an entirely erroneous natural
philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other
philosophers holds good with all the systems of natural philosophy. The
whole of nature, excepting the vacuum, contradicts Epicurus; and no
phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which I have just explained. Well,
is not a philosophy which is in accord with all that passes in nature,
and which contents the most careful minds, superior to all other
non-revealed systems?

After the assertions of the ancient philosophers, which I have
reconciled as far as has been possible for me, what is left to us? a
chaos of doubts and chimeras. I do not think that there has ever been a
philosopher with a system who did not at the end of his life avow that
he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the
mechanical arts have been much more useful to mankind than the inventors
of syllogisms: the man who invented the shuttle surpasses with a
vengeance the man who imagined innate ideas.

_PREJUDICES_

Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do
people inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the
children can judge.

There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue.
In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and
revenging God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to
look on theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess
what is a vice and what a virtue.

There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are
ratified by judgment when one reasons.

Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A
mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love
him; she cherishes hi