François de Salignac de La Mothe- Fénelon

“ Whence proceeds the government of that universal machine which incessantly works for us without so much as our thinking upon it? To whom shall we ascribe the choice and gathering of so many deep and so well conceited springs, and of so many bodies, great and small, visible and invisible, which equally concur to serve us? The least atom of this machine that should happen to be out of order would unhinge all nature. For the springs and movements of a watch are not put together with so much art and niceness as those of the universe. ”

“ Beauty, you may say, deceives the possessor of it much more than it does those whom it dazzles: it agitates and intoxicates the soul; we are more foolishly idolising ourselves, than the most passionate lovers the object of their affection. A few years only make the difference between a beautiful and ordinary woman. Beauty is not desirable unless it produces advantageous marriages: and how should it effect this, unsupported by merit and virtue? ”

“ There is nothing but the whole that is intelligible; and the whole is too vast and immense to be seen at close view. Every event is like a particular character that is too large for our narrow organs, and which signifies nothing of itself and separate from the rest. When, at the consummation of ages, we shall see in God—that is, in the true point and centre of perspective—the total of human events, from the first to the last day of the universe, together with their proportions with regard to the designs of God, we shall cry out, “Lord, Thou alone art just and wise!” ”

“ The summits of high mountains have, even at all times, ice and snow, which are the springs of rivers, and soaking pasture-grounds render them more fertile. Here waters are sweet to quench the thirst of man; there they are briny, and yield a salt that seasons our meat, and makes it incorruptible. In fine, if I lift up my eyes, I perceive in the clouds that fly above us a sort of hanging seas that serve to temper the air, break the fiery rays of the sun, and water the earth when it is too dry. What hand was able to hang over our heads those great reservatories of waters? ”

“ Shall I ascribe it to my feeble mind, or rather to the power it has over my body, which is so vastly different from it? Shall I believe that my will has that supreme command of its own nature, though in itself so weak and imperfect? But how comes it to pass that, among so many bodies, it has that power over no more than one? For no other body moves according to its desires. Now, who is it that gave over one body the power it had over no other? Will any man be again so bold as to ascribe this to chance? ”

“ There is a sun of spirits that lights them far better than the visible sun lights bodies. This sun of spirits gives us, at once, both its light, and the love of it, in order to seek it. That sun of truth leaves no manner of darkness, and shines at the same time in the two hemispheres. It lights us as much by night as by day; nor does it spread its rays outwardly; but inhabits in every one of us. A man can never deprive another man of its beams. One sees it equally, in whatever corner of the universe he may lurk. A man never needs say to another, step aside, to let me see that sun ”

“ Thus what appears most to be part of ourselves, and our very essence, I mean our reason, is least our own, and what, on the contrary, ought to be accounted most borrowed. We continually receive a reason superior to us, as we incessantly breathe the air, which is a foreign body; or as we incessantly see all the objects near us by the light of the sun, whose rays are bodies foreign to our eyes. That superior reason over-rules and governs, to a certain degree, with an absolute power all men, even the least rational, and makes them all ever agree, in spite of themselves, upon those points. ”

“ The summer yields rich harvests. The autumn bestows the fruits promised by the spring. The winter, which is a kind of night wherein man refreshes and rests himself, lays up all the treasures of the earth in its centre with no other design but that the next spring may display them with all the graces of novelty. Thus nature, variously attired, yields so many fine prospects that she never gives man leisure to be disgusted with what he possesses.
But how is it possible for the course of the sun to be so regular? It appears that star is only a globe of most subtle flame. ”

“ Whatever effort a man may make in his own mind, yet it is impossible for him ever to entertain a serious doubt about the truths which those ideas clearly represent to us. For instance, I never can seriously call in question, whether the whole is bigger than one of its parts; or whether the centre of a perfect circle is equally distant from all the points of the circumference. The idea of the infinite is in me like that of numbers, lines, circles, a whole, and a part. The changing our ideas would be, in effect, the annihilating reason itself. ”

“ A man who lives without reflecting thinks only on the parts of matter that are near him, or have any relation to his wants. He only looks upon the earth as on the floor of his chamber, and on the sun that lights him in the daytime as on the candle that lights him in the night. His thoughts are confined within the place he inhabits. On the contrary, a man who is used to contemplate and reflect carries his looks further, and curiously considers the almost infinite abysses that surround him on all sides. ”

“ There is in what they call nature and instinct a superior art and contrivance, of which human invention is but a shadow. What is beyond all question is, that there are in beasts a prodigious number of motions entirely indeliberate, and which yet are performed according to the nicest rules of mechanics. It is the machine alone that follows those rules: which is a fact independent from all philosophy; and matter of fact is ever decisive. What would a man think of a watch that should fly or slip away, turn, again, or defend itself, for its own preservation, if he went about to break it? ”

“ If Thou wert a barren, impotent, and inanimate body, like a flower that fades away, a river that runs, a house that decays and falls to ruin, a picture that is but a collection of colours to strike the imagination, or a useless metal that glisters—they would perceive Thee, and fondly ascribe to Thee the power of giving them some pleasure, although in reality pleasure cannot proceed from inanimate beings, which are themselves void and incapable of it, but only from Thee alone, the true spring of all joy. ”

“ On the one hand, the power I have of willing evil is, indeed, rather a weakness and frailty of my will than a true power: for it is only a power to fall, to degrade myself, and to diminish my degree of perfection and being. On the other hand, the power I have to will good is not an absolute power, since I have it not of myself. Now liberty being no more than that power, a precarious and borrowed power can constitute but a precarious, borrowed, and dependent liberty; and, therefore, so imperfect and so precarious a being cannot but be dependent. But how is he free? ”

“ At the command of that simple and intimate will, all the parts of my body are at work. Immediately all nerves are distended, all the springs hasten to concur together, and the whole machine obeys, just as if every one of the most secret of those organs heard a supreme and omnipotent voice. This is certainly the most simple and most effectual power that can be conceived. All the other beings within our knowledge afford not the like instance of it, and this is precisely what men that are sensible and persuaded of a Deity ascribe to it in all the universe. ”

“ Let us supply by our imagination what our eyes are defective in; and let our fancy itself be a kind of microscope, and represent to us in every atom a thousand new and invisible worlds: but it will never be able incessantly to paint to us new discoveries in little bodies; it will be tired, and forced at last to stop, and sink, leaving in the smallest organ of a body a thousand wonders undiscovered. ”

“ What thoughts could a man entertain of such a fantastic philosopher, if he should persist seriously to assert that such a house displays no art? When we read the fabulous story of Amphion, who by a miraculous effect of harmony caused the stones to rise, and placed themselves, with order and symmetry, one on the top of another, in order to form the walls of Thebes, we laugh and sport with that poetical fiction: but yet this very fiction is not so incredible as that which the free-thinking philosopher we contend with would dare to maintain. ”

“ My brain is like a closet full of pictures, which should move and set themselves in order at the master’s pleasure. Painters, with all their art and skill, never attain but an imperfect likeness; whereas the pictures I have in my head are so faithful, that it is by consulting them I perceive all the defects of those made by painters, and correct them within myself. Now, do these images, more like their original than the masterpieces of the art of painting, imprint themselves in my head without any art? Is my brain a book, all the characters of which have ranged themselves of their own accord? ”

“ Is it therefore a wonder that poets animated the whole universe, bestowed wings upon the winds, and arrows on the sun, and described great rivers impetuously running to precipitate themselves into the sea, and trees shooting up to heaven to repel the rays of the sun by their thick shades? These images and figures have also been received in the language of the vulgar, so natural it is for men to be sensible of the wonderful art that fills all nature. Poetry did only ascribe to inanimate creatures the art and design of the Creator, who does everything in them. ”

“ If on the contrary they are only, as it were, lighted torches to shine in our eyes in this small globe called earth, how great is that power which nothing can fatigue, nothing can exhaust? What a profuse liberality it is to give man in this little corner of the universe so marvellous a spectacle!
But among those stars I perceive the moon, which seems to share with the sun the care and office of lighting us. She appears at set times with all the other stars, when the sun is obliged to go and carry back the day to the other hemisphere. ”

“ It is, no doubt, to present us with a noble spectacle that an Omnipotent Hand has set before our eyes so great and so bright objects. It is in order to raise our admiration of heaven, says Tully, that God made man unlike the rest of animals. He stands upright, and lifts up his head, that he may be employed about the things that were above him. Sometimes we see a duskish azure sky, where the purest fires twinkle. Sometimes we behold, in a temperate heaven, the softest colours mixed with such variety as it is not in the power of painting to imitate. ”

“ But, after all, whole nature shows the infinite art of its Maker. When I speak of an art, I mean a collection of proper means chosen on purpose to arrive at a certain end; or, if you please, it is an order, a method, an industry, or a set design. Chance, on the contrary, is a blind and necessary cause, which neither sets in order nor chooses anything, and which has neither will nor understanding. Now I maintain that the universe bears the character and stamp of a cause infinitely powerful and industrious ”

“ He will not so much as understand what you mean. He is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward springs of his machine. The lute-player, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the strings of his instrument, who sees them with his eyes, and touches them one after another with his fingers, yet mistakes them sometimes. But the soul that governs the machine of man’s body moves all its springs in time, without seeing or discerning them, without being acquainted with their figure, situation, or strength, and yet it never mistakes. ”

“ To speak at this rate is building castles in the air, and imposing vain imaginations on the belief of others; for who has told these philosophers that the mass of matter has ever the same motion in its totality? Who has made the experiment of it? Have they the assurance to bestow the name of philosophy upon a rash fiction which takes for granted what they never can make out? Is there no more to do than to suppose whatever one pleases in order to elude the most simple and most constant truths? ”

“ We should be sensible everywhere of what we experience on the top of the highest mountains, where the air is so thin that it yields no sufficient moisture and nourishment for the lungs. But what invisible power raises and lays so suddenly the storms of that great fluid body, of which those of the sea are only consequences? From what treasury come forth the winds that purify the air, cool scorching heats, temper the sharpness of winter, and in an instant change the whole face of heaven? ”