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and fingers to be decorated with diamonds, as it is true to say, that the ears have been made to hear sounds, and the eyes to receive light.

This difficulty, I apprehend, may be easily cleared up, when the effects are invariably the same in all times and places; when such uniform effects are independent of the beings they appertain to, there is then evidently a final cause.

All animals have eyes and they see; all have ears and they hear; all a mouth with which they eat; a stomach, or something similar, by which they digest; all an orifice which voids the excrements; all an instrument of generation, and these natural gifts operate in them without the intervention of any art. Here are clear demonstrations of final causes, and to gainsay so universal a truth, would be to pervert our faculty of thinking.

But it is not in all places, nor at all times, that stones form edifices; all noses do not wear spectacles; all fingers have not a ring, nor are all legs covered with silk stockings: therefore a silk worm is not made to cover my legs, as your mouth is made to eat, and backside for evayour cuation. Thus there are effects produced by final causes, but withal many which cannot come within that appellation.

But both the one and the other are equally agreeable to the plan of general Providence; for certainly nothing comes to pass in opposition to it, or so much as without it. Every particular within the compass of nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate work of their Author. From him are derived the laws by which the moon is three-fourths of the cause of tides, and the sun the other fourth; it is he who has given a rotary motion to the sun, by which in five mi

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nutes and a half it emits rays of light into the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.

But if, after many centuries, we have hit on the invention of shears and spits, with the former sheering the sheep of their wool, and with the latter roasting them for food, what can be inferred from thence, but that God has so made us, that, one day we should necessarily grow ingenious and carnivorous ?

Sheep, doubtless, were not absolutely made to be dressed and eaten; since several nations abstain from that sanguinary practice. Men were not essentially created to butcher one another, for the Bramins and Quakers never kill any body; but the composition we are made of is frequently productive of massacres, as it produces calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and im pertinencies: not that the formation of man is precisely the final cause of our follies and brutaÎities, a final cause being universal and invariable in all places and at all times. The crimes and absurdities of the human mind are, nevertheless, in the eternal order of things. In threshing corn, the flail is the final cause of the grain's separa tion; but if the flail, in threshing the corn, de. ftroys a thousand insects, this is not from any determinate will of mine, neither is it mere chance these insects were at that time under my flail, and it was determined they were to be there.

It is consequential to the nature of things, that a man is ambitious, forms other men into military bodies, that he is beaten or gains a victory; but never can it be said that man was created by God to be knocked on the head in battle.

The

The instruments given to us by nature cannot always be final causes, ever in motion, and infallible in their effect. The eyes, given us for sight, are not always open; every sense has its intervals of rest: there are even some senses we make no use of; for instance, in the case of a poor girl of fourteen, immured in a convent, that door, from which was to proceed a new generation, is for ever shut up; still the final cause subsists, and as soon as it is free will act.

EQUALITY.

WHAT does one dog owe to another, and one horse to another horse? Nothing. No animal depends on its fellow; but man, partaking of that spark of divinity called reason, what advantage accrues to him from this? To be a slave almost every where throughout the earth.

Were this earth what it apparently should be, that is, did man every where meet with an easy, certain, and safe subsistence, and a climate suitable to his nature, it is manifestly impossible that one man could have enslaved another. When this earth shall every where produce salubrious fruits; when the air, which should contribute to our life, shall not bring us sicknesses and death: when man shall stand in need of no other lodging and bed than that of the deer and roebuck; then the Gengis Khans and the Tamerlanes will have no other domestics than their children, and these will have so much natural affection as to assist them in their old age.

In this so natural state, which all quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles enjoy, man would be as happy as they; dominion would then be a chimera, an absurdity,

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absurdity, which no one would think of; for who would make a bustle to get servants without any want of their service?

Should any individual, of a tyrannical disposition, and extraordinary strength, take it into his head to make a slave of his weaker neighbour, the thing would be impracticable; the party oppressed would be an hundred leagues out of the oppressor's reach before he had taken his

measures.

Thus a freedom from wants would necessarily make all men equal. It is the distress annexed to our species which subjects one man to another: not that inequality is a real misfortune; the grievance lies in dependance. What signifies one man being stiled his highness, another his holiness? but to serve either is disagreeable.

A numerous family has successfully cultivated a good soil, whilst two small neighbouring families cannot bring their stubborn grounds to produce any thing; the two poor families must either become servants to the opulent family, or extirpate it; this is self-evident: one of the two indigent families, for a subsistence, goes and offers its labour to the rich; the other goes to dispossess it by force of arms, and is beaten. The former is the origin of domestics and labourers, and from the latter slavery is derived.

In our calamitous globe, it is impossible that men living together in society, should not be divided into two classes, one the rich who command, the other the poor who serve or obey: these two are subdivided into a thousand, and these thousands have their farther subdivisions and gradations.

All the oppressed are not absolutely unhappy.

Most

Most of them being born in a servile state, continual labour preserves them from too sensible a feeling of their situation; but whenever they feel it, wars are the consequence, as at Rome between the plebeian and patrician parties; likewise those of the peasants in Germany, England, and France. All these wars terminate, soon or late, in the subjection of the people, because the great have money, and money does every thing within a state; I say within a state; for between nation and nation it is otherwise. A nation which handles iron best, will ever be too strong for that which, with its abundance of gold, is deficient in skill and courage.

Every man is born with no small propensity to power, riches, and pleasure, and has naturally a delight in indolence; consequently every man is for having the money, wives, or daughters of others; would subject them to all his humours, and do no work, or at least what only pleased himself. You see, that for men with such fine dispositions to be equal, is as impossible as that two preachers, or two professors of divinity, should not be jealous of one another.

Mankind, in the present state, cannot subsist, unless an infinity of useful men have the misfortune of being without any possession whatever: for, to be sure, no man in easy circumstances will plough your grounds; and, if you are in want of a pair of shoes, you must find some other hand than a serjeant at law to make them for you. Thus, inequality is, at the same time, both the most natural and the most chimerical thing in the world.

Men being excessive in every thing where they can be so, this inequality has been carried too

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