such a thing were possible as that of
possessing a clear idea of a pure spirit producing matter. But this
discussion is throwing us into metaphysical researches, which I wish
to avoid. It will be sufficient to you that you may console yourself
for not being able to comprehend it, seeing that the most profound
thinkers, who talk about the creation or the eduction of the world
from nothing, have no ideas on the subject more precise than those
which you form to yourself. As soon, Madam, as you take the trouble to
reflect thereon, you will find that divines, instead of explaining
things, have done nothing but invent words, in order to render them
dubious, and to confound all our natural conceptions.

I will not, however, tire you by a fastidious display of the blunders
which fill the narrative of Moses, which they announce to us as being
dictated by the Deity. If we read it with a little attention, we shall
perceive in every page philosophical and astronomical errors,
unpardonable in an inspired author, and such as we should consider
ridiculous in any man, who, in the most superficial manner, should
have studied and contemplated nature.

You will find, for example, light created before the sun, although
this star is visibly the source of light which communicates itself to
our globe. You will find the evening and the morning established
before the formation of this same sun, whose presence alone produces
day, whose absence produces night, and whose different aspects
constitute morning and evening. You will there find that the moon is
spoken of as a body possessing its own light, in a similar manner as
the sun possesses it, although this planet is a dark body, and
receives its light from the sun. These ignorant blunders are
sufficient to show you that the Deity who revealed himself to Moses
was quite unacquainted with the nature of those substances which he
had created out of nothing, and that you at present possess more
information respecting them than was once possessed by the Creator of
the world.

I am not ignorant that our divines have an answer always ready to
those difficulties which would attack their divine science, and place
their knowledge far below that of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and even
below that of young people who have scarcely studied the first
elements of natural philosophy. They will tell us that God, in order
to render himself intelligible to the savage and ignorant Jews, spoke
in conformity to th