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The System of Nature, Vol. 2

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PRODUCTION NOTES: First published in French in 1770 under the
pseudonym of Mirabaud. This e-book based on a facsimile reprint
of an English translation originally published 1820-21.
This e-text covers the second of the original two volumes.




THE
SYSTEM OF NATURE;

or,

_THE LAWS_
of the
MORAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD.



TRANSLATED
FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH OF
M. DE MIRABAUD



VOL. II.



CONTENTS


PART II. Of the Divinity.--Proofs of his existence.--
Of his attributes.--Of his influence over the happiness of man.


CHAP. I. The origin of man's ideas upon the Divinity.

CHAP. II. Of mythology.--Of theology

CHAP. III. Of the confused and contradictory ideas of theology.

CHAP. IV. Examination of the proofs of the existence of the Divinity,
as given by Clarke.

CHAP. V. Examination of the proofs offered by Descartes, Malebranche,
Newton, &c.

CHAP. VI. Of Pantheism; or of the natural ideas of the Divinity.

CHAP. VII. Of Theism--Of the System of Optimism--Of Final Causes

CHAP. VIII. Examination of the Advantages which result from Man's
Notions on the Divinity;--of their Influence upon Morals;--upon
Politics;--upon Science;--upon the Happiness of Nations, and that
of individuals.

CHAP. IX. Theological Notions cannot be the Basis of Morality.--
Comparison between Theological Ethics and Natural Morality--
Theology prejudicial to the Human Mind.

CHAP. X. Man can form no Conclusion from the Ideas which are offered
him of the Divinity.--Of their want of just Inference.--Of the Inutility
of his Conduct.

CHAP. XI Defence of the Sentiments contained in this Work.--Of Impiety.--
Do there exist Atheists?

CHAP. XII. Is what is termed Atheism, compatible with Morality?

CHAP. XIII. Of the motives which lead to what is falsely called Atheism.--
Can this System be dangerous?--Can it be embraced by the Illiterate?

CHAP. XIV. A summary of the Code of Nature.


A Brief Sketch of the Life and Writings of M. de Mirabaud





MIRABAUD'S
SYSTEM OF NATURE

Translated from the Original
BY SAMUEL WILKINSON





PART II.

ON THE DIVINITY:--PROOFS OF HIS EXISTENCE:--OF HIS ATTRIBUTES:
OF HIS INFLUENCE OVER THE HAPPINESS OF MAN.



CHAP. I.

_The Origin of Man's Ideas upon the Divinity._


If man possessed the courage, if he had the requisite industry to recur
to the source of those opinions which are most deeply engraven on his
brain; if he rendered to himself a faithful account of the reasons which
make him hold these opinions as sacred; if he coolly examined the basis
of his hopes, the foundation of his fears, he would find that it very
frequently happens, those objects, or those ideas which move him most
powerfully, either have no real existence, or are words devoid of
meaning, which terror has conjured up to explain some sudden disaster;
that they are often phantoms engendered by a disordered imagination,
modified by ignorance; the effect of an ardent mind distracted by
contending passions, which prevent him from either reasoning justly, or
consulting experience in his judgment; that this mind often labours with
a precipitancy that throws his intellectual faculties into confusion;
that bewilders his ideas; that consequently he gives a substance and a
form to chimeras, to airy nothings, which he afterwards idolizes from
sloth, reverences from prejudice.

A sensible being placed in a nature where every part is in motion, has
various feelings, in consequence of either the agreeable or disagreeable
effects which he is obliged to experience from this continued action and
re-action; in consequence he either finds himself happy or miserable;
according to the quality of the sensations excited in him, he will love
or fear, seek after or fly from, the real or supposed causes of such
marked effects operated on his machine. But if he is ignorant of nature,
if he is destitute of experience, he will frequently deceive himself as
to these causes; for want of either capability or inclination to recur
back to them, he will neither have a true knowledge of their energy, nor
a clear idea of their mode of acting: thus until reiterated experience
shall have formed his ideas, until the mirror of truth shall have shewn
him the judgment he ought to make, he will be involved in trouble, a
prey to incertitude, a victim to credulity.

Man is a being who brings with him nothing into the world save an
aptitude to feeling in a manner more or less lively according to his
individual organization: he has no innate knowledge of any of the causes
that act upon him: by degrees his faculty of feeling discovers to him
their various qualities; he learns to judge of them; time familiarizes
him with their properties; he attaches ideas to them, according to the
manner in which they have affected him; these ideas are correct or
otherwise, in a ratio to the soundness of his organic structure: his
judgment is faulty or not, as these organs are either well or ill-
constituted; in proportion as they are competent to afford him sure and
reiterated experience.

The first moments of man are marked by his wants; that is to say, the
first impulse he receives is to conserve his existence; this he would
not be able to maintain without the concurrence of many analogous
causes: these wants in a sensible being, manifest themselves by a
general languor, a sinking, a confusion in his machine, which gives him
the consciousness of a painful sensation: this derangement subsists, is
even augmented, until the cause suitable to remove it re-establishes the
harmony so necessary to the existence of the human frame. Want,
therefore, is the first evil man experiences; nevertheless it is
requisite to the maintenance of his existence. Was it not for this
derangement of his body, which obliges him to furnish its remedy, he
would not be warned of the necessity of preserving the existence he has
received. Without wants man would be an insensible machine, similar to a
vegetable; like that he would be incapable of preserving himself; he
would not be competent to using the means required to conserve his
being. To his wants are to be ascribed his passions; his desires; the
exercise of his corporeal functions; the play of his intellectual
faculties: they are his wants that oblige him to think; that determine
his will, that induce him to act; it is to satisfy them or rather to put
an end to the painful sensations excited by their presence, that
according to his capacity, to the natural sensibility of his soul, to
the energies which are peculiar to himself, he gives play to his
faculties, exerts the activity of his bodily strength, or displays the
extensive powers of his mind. His wants being perpetual, he is obliged
to labour without relaxation, to procure objects competent to satisfy
them. In a word, it is owing to his multiplied wants that man's energy
is kept in a state of continual activity: as soon as he ceases to have
wants, he falls into inaction--becomes listless--declines into apathy--
sinks into a languor that is incommodious to his feelings or prejudicial
to his existence: this lethargic state of weariness lasts until new
wants, by giving him fresh activity, rouse his dormant faculties--throw
off his stupor--re-animate his vigour, and destroy the sluggishness to
which he had become a prey.

From hence it will be obvious that evil is necessary to man; without it
he would neither be in a condition to know that which injures him; to
avoid its presence; or to seek his own welfare: without this stimulus,
he would differ in nothing from insensible, unorganized beings: if those
evanescent evils which he calls _wants_, did not oblige him to call
forth his faculties, to set his energies in motion, to cull experience,
to compare objects, to discriminate them, to separate those which have
the capabilities to injure him, from those which possess the means to
benefit him, he would be insensible to happiness--inadequate to
enjoyment. In short, _without evil man would be ignorant of good_; he
would be continually exposed to perish like the leaf on a tree. He would
resemble an infant, who, destitute of experience, runs the risque of
meeting his destruction at every step he takes, unguarded by his nurse.
What the nurse is to the child, experience is to the adult; when either
are wanting, these children of different lustres generally go astray:
frequently encounter disaster. Without evil he would be unable to judge
of any thing; he would have no preference; his will would be without
volition, he would be destitute of passions; desire would find no place
in his heart; he would not revolt at the most disgusting objects; he
would not strive to put them away; he would neither have stimuli to
love, nor motives to fear any thing; he would be an insensible
automaton; he would no longer be a man.

If no evil had existed in this world, man would never have dreamt of
those numerous divinities, to whom he has rendered such various modes of
worship. If nature had permitted him easily to satisfy all his
regenerating wants, if she had given him none but agreeable sensations,
his days would have uninterruptedly rolled on in one perpetual
uniformity; he would never have discovered his own nakedness; he would
never have had motives to search after the unknown causes of things--to
meditate in pain. Therefore man, always contented, would only have
occupied himself with satisfying his wants; with enjoying the present,
with feeling the influence of objects, that would unceasingly warn him
of his existence in a mode that he must necessarily approve; nothing
would alarm his heart; every thing would be analogous to his existence:
he would neither know fear, experience distrust, nor have inquietude for
the future: these feelings can only be the consequence of some
troublesome sensation, which must have anteriorly affected him, or which
by disturbing the harmony of his machine, has interrupted the course of
his happiness; which has shewn him he is naked.

Independent of those wants which in man renew themselves every instant;
which he frequently finds it impossible to satisfy; every individual
experiences a multiplicity of evils--he suffers from the inclemency of
the seasons--he pines in penury--he is infected with plague--he is
scourged by war--he is the victim of famine--he is afflicted with
disease--he is the sport of a thousand accidents, &c. This is the reason
why all men are fearful; why the whole human race are diffident. The
knowledge he has of pain alarms him upon all unknown causes, that is to
say, upon all those of which he has not yet experienced the effect; this
experience made with precipitation, or if it be preferred, by instinct,
places him on his guard against all those objects from the operation of
which he is ignorant what consequences may result to himself.

His inquietude is in proportion; his fears keep pace with the extent of
the disorder which these objects produce in him; they are measured by
their rarity, that is to say, by the inexperience he has of them; by the
natural sensibility of the soul; and by the ardour of his imagination.
The wore ignorant man is, the less experience he has, the more he is
susceptible of fear; solitude, the obscurity of a forest, silence, and
the darkness of night, desolate ruins, the roaring of the wind, sudden,
confused noises, are objects of terror to all who are unaccustomed to
these things. The uninformed man is a child whom every thing astonishes;
who trembles at every thing he encounters: his alarms disappear, his
fears diminish, his mind becomes calm, in proportion as experience
familiarizes him, more or less, with natural effects; his fears cease
entirely, as soon as he understands, or believes he understands, the
causes that act; or when he knows how to avoid their effects. But if he
cannot penetrate the causes which disturb him, if he cannot discover the
agents by whom he suffers, if he cannot find to what account to place
the confusion he experiences, his inquietude augments; his fears
redouble; his imagination leads him astray; it exaggerates his evil;
paints in a disorderly manner these unknown objects of his terror;
magnifies their powers; then making an analogy between them and those
terrific objects, with whom he is already acquainted, he suggests to
himself the means he usually takes to mitigate their anger; to
conciliate their kindness; he employs similar measures to soften the
anger, to disarm the power, to avert the effects of the concealed cause
which gives birth to his inquietudes, which fills him with anxiety,
which alarms his fears. It is thus his weakness, aided by ignorance,
renders him superstitious.

There are very few men, even in our own day, who have sufficiently
studied nature, who are fully apprised of physical causes, or with the
effects they must necessarily produce. This ignorance, without doubt,
was much greater in the more remote ages of the world, when the human
mind, yet in its infancy, had not collected that experience, taken that
expansion, made those strides towards improvement, which distinguishes
the present from the past. Savages dispersed, erratic, thinly scattered
up and down, knew the course of nature either very imperfectly or not at
all; society alone perfects human knowledge: it requires not only
multiplied but combined efforts to unravel the secrets of nature. This
granted, all natural causes were mysteries to our wandering ancestors;
the entire of nature was an enigma to them; all its phenomena was
marvellous, every event inspired terror to beings who were destitute of
experience; almost every thing, they saw must have appeared to them
strange, unusual, contrary to their idea of the order of things.

It cannot then furnish matter for surprise, if we behold men in the
present day trembling at the sight of those objects which have formerly
filled their fathers with dismay. _Eclipse, comets, meteors_, were, in
ancient days, subjects of alarm to all the people of the earth: these
effects, so natural in the eyes of the sound philosopher, who has by
degrees fathomed their true causes, have yet the right, possess the
power, to alarm the most numerous, to excite the fears of the least
instructed part of modern nations. The people of the present day, as
well as their ignorant ancestors, find something marvellous, believe
there is a supernatural agency in all those objects to which their eyes
are unaccustomed; they consider all those unknown causes as wonderful,
that act with a force of which their mind has no idea it is possible the
known agents are capable. The ignorant see wonders _prodigies,
miracles_, in all those striking effects of which they are unable to
render themselves a satisfactory account; all the causes which produce
them they think _supernatural_; this, however, really implies nothing
more than that they are not familiar to them, or that they have not
hitherto witnessed natural agents, whose energy was equal to the
production of effects so rare, so astonishing, as those with which their
sight has been appalled.

Besides the ordinary phenomena to which nations were witnesses without
being competent to unravel the causes, they have in times very remote
from ours, experienced calamities, whether general or local, which
filled them with the most cruel inquietude; which plunged them into an
abyss of consternation. The traditions of all people, the annals of all
nations, recal, even at this day, melancholy events, physical disasters,
dreadful catastrophes, which had the effect of spreading universal
terror among our forefathers, But when history should he silent on these
stupendous revolutions, would not our own reflection on what passes
under our eyes be sufficient to convince us, that all parts of our globe
have been, and following the course of things, will necessarily be again
violently agitated, overturned, changed, overflowed, in a state of
conflagration? Vast continents have been inundated, seas breaking their
limits have usurped the dominion of the earth; at length retiring, these
waters have left striking, proofs of their presence, by the marine
vestiges of shells, skeletons of sea fish, &c. which the attentive
observer meets with at every step, in the bowels of those fertile
countries we now inhabit--subterraneous fires have opened to themselves
the most frightful volcanoes, whose craters frequently issue destruction
on every side. In short, the elements unloosed, have at various times,
disputed among themselves the empire of our globe; this exhibits
evidence of the fact, by those vast heaps of wreck, those stupendous
ruins spread over its surface. What, then, must have been the fears of
mankind, who in those countries believed he beheld the entire of nature
armed against his peace, menacing with destruction his very abode? What
must have been the inquietude of a people taken thus unprovided, who
fancied they saw nature cruelly labouring to their annihilation? Who
beheld a world ready to be dashed into atoms; who witnessed the earth
suddenly rent asunder; whose yawning chasm was the grave of large
cities, whole provinces, entire nations? What ideas must mortals, thus
overwhelmed with terror, form to themselves of the irresistible cause
that could produce such extended effects? Without doubt they did not
attribute these wide spreading calamities to nature; neither did they
conceive they were mere physical causes; they could not suspect she was
the author, the accomplice of the confusion she herself experienced;
they did not see that these tremendous revolutions, these overpowering
disorders, were the necessary result of her immutable laws; that they
contributed to the general order by which she subsists; that, in point
of fact, there was nothing more surprising in the inundation of large
portions of the earth, in the swallowing up an entire nation, in a
volcanic conflagration spreading destruction over whole provinces, than
there is in a stone falling to the earth, or the death of a fly; that
each equally has its spring in the necessity of things.

It was under these astounding circumstances, that nations, bathed in the
most bitter tears, perplexed with the most frightful visions,
electrified with terror, not believing there existed on this mundane
ball, causes sufficiently powerful to operate the gigantic phenomena
that filled their minds with dismay, carried their streaming eyes
towards heaven, where their tremulous fears led them to suppose these
unknown agents, whose unprovoked enmity destroyed, their earthly
felicity, could alone reside.

It was in the lap of ignorance, in the season of alarm, in the bosom of
calamity, that mankind ever formed his first notions of the _Divinity_.
From hence it is obvious that his ideas on this subject are to be
suspected, that his notions are in a great measure false, that they are
always afflicting. Indeed, upon whatever part of our sphere we cast our
eyes, whether it be upon the frozen climates of the north, upon the
parching regions of the south, or under the more temperate zones, we
every where behold the people when assailed by misfortunes, have either
made to themselves national gods, or else have adopted those which have
been given them by their conquerors; before these beings, either of
their own creation or adoption, they have tremblingly prostrated
themselves in the hour of calamity, soliciting relief; have ignorantly
attributed to blocks of stone, or to men like themselves, those natural
effects which were above their comprehension; the inhabitants of many
nations, not contented with the national gods, made each to himself one
or more gods, which he supposed presided exclusively over his own
household, from whom he supposed he derived his own peculiar happiness,
to whom he attributed all his domestic misfortunes. The idea of these
powerful agents, these supposed distributors of good and evil, was
always associated with that of terror; their name was never pronounced
without recalling to man's wind either his own particular calamities or
those of his fathers. In many places man trembles at this day, because
his progenitors have trembled for thousands of years past. The thought
of his gods always awakened in man the most afflicting ideas. If he
recurred to the source of his actual fears, to the commencement of those
melancholy impressions that stamp themselves in his mind when their name
is announced, he would find it in the conflagrations, in the
revolutions, in those extended disasters, that have at various times
destroyed large portions of the human race; that overwhelmed with dismay
those miserable beings who escaped the destruction of the earth; these
in transmitting to posterity, the tradition of such afflicting events,
have also transmitted to him their fears; have delivered down to their
successors, those gloomy ideas which their bewildered imaginations,
coupled with their barbarous ignorance of natural causes, had formed to
them of the anger of their irritated gods, to which their alarm falsely
attributed these sweeping disasters.

If the gods of nations had their birth in the bosom of alarm, it was
again in that of despair that each individual formed the unknown power
that he made exclusively for himself. Ignorant of physical causes,
unpractised in their mode of action, unaccustomed to their effects,
whenever he experienced any serious misfortune, whenever he was
afflicted with any grievous sensation, he was at a loss how to account
for it; he therefore attributed it to his household gods, to whom he
made an immediate supplication for assistance, or rather for forbearance
of further affliction: this disposition in man has been finely
pourtrayed by Aesop in his fable of "the Waggoner and Hercules." The
motion which in despight of himself was excited in his machine, his
diseases, his troubles, his passions, his inquietude, the painful
alterations his frame underwent, without his being able to fathom the
true causes; at length death, of which the aspect in so formidable to a
being strongly attached to existence, were effects he looked upon either
as supernatural, or else he conceived they were repugnant to his actual
nature; he attributed them to some mighty cause, which maugre all his
efforts, disposed of him at each, moment. Thus palsied with alarm,
benumbed with terror, he pensively meditated upon his sorrows; agitated
with fear, he sought for means to avert the calamities that threatened
him with destruction; his imagination, thus rendered desperate by his
endurance of evils which he found inevitable, formed to him those
phantoms which he called gods; before whom he trembled from a
consciousness of his own weakness; thus disposed, he endeavoured by
prostration, by sacrifices, by prayers, to disarm the anger of these
imaginary beings to which his trepidation had given birth; whom he
ignorantly imagined to be the cause of his misery, whom his fancy
painted to him as endowed with the power of alleviating his sufferings:
it was thus in the extremity of his grief, in the exacerbation of his
mind, weighed down with misfortune, that unhappy man fashioned those
chimeras which filled him with the most gloomy ideas, which he
transmitted to his posterity, as the surest means of avoiding the evils
to which he had been himself subjected.

Man never judges of those objects of which he is ignorant, but through
the medium of those which come within his knowledge: thus man, taking
himself for the model, ascribed will, intelligence, design, projects,
passions; in a word, qualities analogous to his own, to all those
unknown causes of which he experienced the action. As soon as a visible
or supposed cause affects him in an agreeable manner, or in a mode
favourable to his existence, he concludes it to be good, to be well
intentioned towards him: on the contrary, he judges all those to be bad
in their nature, evilly disposed, to have the intention of injuring him,
which cause him any painful sensations. He attributes views, plans, a
system of conduct like his own, to every thing which to his limited
ideas appears of itself to produce connected effects; to act with
regularity; to constantly operate in the same manner; that uniformly
produces the same sensations in his own person. According to these
notions, which he always borrows from himself, from his own peculiar
mode of action, he either loves or fears those objects which have
affected him; he in consequence approaches them with confidence or
timidity; seeks after them or flies from them in proportion as the
feelings they have excited are either pleasant or painful. Having
travelled thus far, he presently addresses them; he invokes their aid;
prays to them for succour; conjures them to cease his afflictions; to
forbear tormenting him; as he finds himself sensible to presents,
pleased with submission, he tries to win them to his interests by
humiliation, by sacrifices; he exercises towards them the hospitality he
himself loves; he gives them an asylum; he builds them a dwelling; he
furnishes them with costly raiment; he makes their altars smoke with
delicious food; he proffers to their acceptance the earliest flowers of
spring; the finest fruits of autumn; the rich grain of summer; in short
he sets before them all those things which he thinks will please them
the most, because he himself places the highest value on them. These
dispositions enable us to account for the formation of tutelary gods, of
lares, of larvae, which every man makes to himself in savage and
unpolished nations. Thus we perceive that weak superstitious mortals,
ignorant of truth, devoid of experience, regard as the arbiters of their
fate, as the dispensers of good and evil, animals, stones, unformed
inanimate substances, which the effort of their heated imaginations
transform into gods, whom they invest with intelligence, whom they
clothe with desires, to whom they give volition.

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