Reader, I have given you this chapter of ancient cosmogonies under the conviction that a bare statement of them must convince any one of either the ignorance or dishonesty of infidels who claim that Moses learned all that he gave in his cosmogony from the ancient cosmogonies. How was it that Moses avoided all their errors and extravagance? How was it that he gave such a severely simple description of creation, which no rhetoric can improve, and no scientist successfully refute?
Can you believe that energy, or force, lies behind all things, operating them, without believing there is something lying behind it, to which it belongs?
Can you believe that a concourse of dead atoms held a solemn convention, went into harmonious action and produced life?
Some Of The Beauties (?) Of Harmony Among Unbelievers.
The author of “The System of Nature” says of the English Jesuit's creation of eels by spontaneous generation from rye meal: “After moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life, which is itself but an assemblage of motions.”—Part 1, p. 23. For Needham's Eels, see the Volume of Physics.
Voltaire says: “Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning I do not see how it would prove there is no God.”
He says, it is really strange that men, while denying a creator should have attributed to themselves the power of creating eels. But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps and the Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal.
Voltaire says the ridiculous story of the spontaneous production of eels by rye meal is the foundation of D'Holbach's “System of Nature.” He says: “We were assured, not long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen rabbits.” He then adds, “Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels hen.” D'Holbach says: “Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way.” Voltaire responds: “This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life?”
The author of the “System of Nature” says: “Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are transitory and contingent.” Upon the supposition that all is [pg 067] matter, Voltaire answers, it is hard to comprehend, matter being, according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can be anything contingent.