CHAOS.

We find no where a more just epitome of the doctrines of the ancients, concerning Chaos, and of the manner in which the universe was formed out of it, than in the exordium to the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Nothing can be clearer and more intelligible than that noble description, if we confine ourselves to the poet’s phrases; but if we examine his doctrines we shall find them more incoherent and contradictory than the Chaos which he describes. I shall enquire whether the ideas of the ancients, who spoke of the Chaos.

were just, and whether they could properly say that this state of confusion had terminated. I will make it appear, that the combat of the elements ceased not at the time of the production of the world, and in particular that the human race is to he excepted from the general pacification, since it has ever been subject to confusion and contradictions the most horrible.

To proceed methodically, I must in the first place supply the poet’s description of Chaos.

“ Ante mare et terras, et quod tegit omnia cælum,
Unus erat toto nature vultus in orbe,
Quem dixêre Chaos; rudis indigestaque moles:
Nec quicquam, nisi pondus iners, congestaque eôdem
Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. N
ullus adhuc mundo præbebat lumina Titan,
Nec nova crescendo reparabat cornua Phoebe,
Nec circumfuso pendebat in aëre tellus,
Ponderibus librata suis: nec brachia longo
Margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite.
Quâque erat et tellus, il lie et pontus, et aër.
Sic erat instabilis tellus, inabilis unda,
Lucis egens aër: nulli sua forma manebat.
Obstabatque aliis aliud: quia corpore in uno
Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondéré habentia pondus.” Lib. i. ver. 5. ⁸⁴

“ Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven’s high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky;
Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lie:
Nor seas around the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable,

No certain form on any was impress'd;
All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fix’d;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mix’d.”
Dryden.

You see, that by the Chaos they understood a mass of matter without form, in which the seeds of all particular bodies were jumbled together in the greatest confusion. The air, the water, and the earth, were every where confounded; the whole was at war; each part opposed each part; the cold and the heat, moisture and dryness, levity and gravity struggled one with another, in one and the same body all over the vast extent of matter. Now let us see how Ovid supposes that this state of confusion was disentangled.

“Hanc Deus, et melior litem natura diremit.
Nam cœlo terras, et terris abscidit undas,
Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aëre cœlum.
Quæ postquam evolvit, cæcoque exemit acervo,
Dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit. Ignea convex vis et sine pondere cœli
Emicuit, summâque locum sibi legit in arce,
Proximus est aër illi levitate, locoque. Densior his tellus, elementaque grandia traxit,
Et pressa est gravitate sui. Circumfluus humor,
Ultima possedit, solidumque coërcuit orbem.
Sic ubi dispositam, quisquis fuit ills Deorum;
Congeriem secuit, sectamque in membra redegit:
Principio terram. lb. ver. 21. ⁸⁵

“ But God, or nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end;
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv’n,
And grosser air sunk from ætherial heav's.
Thus dissembroil’d, they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace;
Aud foes are sunder'd, by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took it’s dwelling in the vaulted sky:

Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous throng
Of pond’rous, thick, unweildy seeds along.
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form’d the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round, &c.”
Dryden.

You see he says this war of the confused and intangled elements, was determined by the authority of a God who parted them, and assigned to each their proper place; ranking fire in the uppermost region, the earth in the lowermost, the air immediately below the fire, and the water immediately below the air; and then forming a bond of friendship and concord between the four elements thus settled in separate stations. By consequence the analysis of our poet’s discourse may be reduced to these six propositions.

I. Before there was a heaven, an earth, and a sea, nature was one homogeneous whole.

II. This whole was only a lumpish mass, in which the principles of things were heaped up together in confusion and without symmetry, and after a discordant manner.

III. Heat struggled with cold in the same body; moisture and dryness had the same quarrel, and levity and gravity had no less.

IV. God put an end to this war by parting the combatants.

V. He assigned them distinct habitations, according to the gravity and levity peculiar to them.

VI. He formed a strict alliance between them.

I shall give a general view of the faults to be met . with in this doctrine of Ovid. I do not know

whether it was ever criticized upon, or whether the commentators have ever examined this part of the metamorphosis philosophically; but methinks they might easily have perceived,

In the 1 st place, that the first proposition is little consistent with the second; for if the parts of a whole are composed of contrary seeds or principles, that whole cannot pass for homogeneous.

In the 2d place, that the second proposition does not agree with the third; for we cannot call that whole a mere heavy mass, in which there is as much levity as gravity.

In the 3d place, that this heavy mass cannot be looked upon as inactive,pondus iners, since contrary principles are blended in it without symmetry; whence it follows, that their actual struggle must terminate in the victory of one or the other.

In the 4th place, that the first three propositions being once true, the fourth and fifth are superfluous; for the elementary qualities are a principle of sufficient force to disentangle the chaos without the intervention of another cause, and to place the parts at a greater or lesser distance from the centre, proportionably to their gravity or levity.

In the 5th place, that the fourth proposition is false upon another account; for, since the production of the heavens, of air, water, and earth, the struggle of cold and heat, moisture and dryness, gravity and levity, is as great in the same body as ever it could be before.

In the 5th place, that for the reason last mentioned, the sixth proposition is false.

Whence it is manifest, that the description of the Chaos, and of it’s extrication, is composed of propositions more opposite to one another, than the elements were opposite to one another during the Chaos.

It is needless to enlarge upon each of these false

doctrines of Ovid; but there are some of them which require a pretty long illustration.

I say then, that nothing can be more absurd than to suppose a Chaos, which has been homogeneous during all eternity, notwithstanding it had the elementary qualities, both those called alteratrices, which are heat, cold, moisture, and drought; and those called motrices, which are levity and gravity; the former causing motion upwards, and the other downwards. A mass of this nature cannot be homogeneous, but must necessarily contain all sorts of heterogeneity. Heat and cold, moisture and drought cannot be together, but that their action and re-action must temper them and convert them into other qualities which make the form cf mixed bodies: and forasmuch as this temperament may arise, according to the innumerable diversities of combinations, the chaos must have contained an incredible number of species of compounds. The only way to conceive an homogeneous chaos, would be to say, that thealteratrices qualities of the elements would modify themselves to the same degree in all themolecules, or small particles of matter, insomuch that there would be all over precisely the same luke-warmness, the same softness, the same smell, the same taste, &c. But this would be pulling down with one hand what is built up with the other; would be, by acontradicto in terminis, calling a chaos the most regular work, the most marvellous in it’s symmetry, and the most admirably well proportioned, that can be conceived. I own, that a diversified work suits better with the fancy and relish of mankind, than what is uniform; but at the same time our ideas teach us, that the harmony of contrary qualities preserved uniformly all over the universe, would be a perfection as wonderful as the unequal partition that succeeded to the chaos. What knowledge, what power, would not that uniform harmony, spread all over nature,

require? To put into every mixed body the same quantity of each of the four ingredients, would not suffice; some would require more, some less, according as the force of some is greater or lesser for acting than for resisting; for it is well known, that the philosophers distribute action and re-action to the elementary qualities in a different degree. Upon the whole, every thing considered, it would be found that the cause which metamorphosed the chaos, would have taken it not out of a state of war and confusion, as is here supposed, but out of a state of regularity which was the most accomplished thing in the world, and by which, by reducing the contrary forces to anæquilibrium, kept them in a repose equivalent to peace. It is manifest therefore, if the poets would save the homogeneity of the chaos, they must strike out all they have added concerning that fantastical confusion of contrary seeds, and that indigested mixture, and perpetual war of jarring principles.

But to wave this contradiction, we shall find matter enough to attack them in other points, and shall next encounter them on that of eternity. Nothing can be more absurd than to admit the mixture of the insensible parts of the four elements for an infinite time; for since you suppose in those parts the activity of heat, the action and re-action of the four first qualities, and besides that, the motion of the particles of earth and water towards the centre, and the motion of those of fire and air towards the circumference, you, at the same time, establish a principle, which will necessarily separate those four species of bodies, one from another, which will require for this purpose no more than a certain limited time. Do but reflect a little upon what is called the phial of the four elements. In that phial we put up little metallic particles, and then three liquors much lighter one than another. Shake all these together, and you

will discern none of the four ingredients, the parts of each being blended one with the other; but then let the phial stand still, and you will find each of them resume their proper stations. All the metallic particles will meet at the bottom, those of the lightest liquor in the uppermost station; those of the liquor which is heavier than the last, and lighter than the first, will post themselves in the third; those of the liquor which is heavier than the two last, but lighter than the metallic particles, in the second: and thus you recover the distinct situations which had been confounded by shaking the glass. In making this experiment, you do not need much patience; a short space of time will serve for recovering the representation of the situation which nature has given to the four elements in the world. Now, comparing the universe to this phial, we may conclude, that if the earth, reduced to powder, had been mixed with the matter of the stars, with that of the air, and of water, so that the very insensible parts of each of those elements had been blended together, all of them would presently have strove to be disentangled, and at the end of a certain prefixed time, the parts of the earth would have formed a mass, those of fire another, and so on in proportion to the gravity and levity of each species of bodies.

We may yet make use of another comparison, and suppose the chaos like new wine fermenting. This is a state of confusion: the spirituous and terrestrial particles are jumbled together, insomuch that neither sight nor taste can distinguish what is properly wine, and what is tartar or lees. This confusion excites a furious struggle between these different parts of matter. The shock is so violent, that sometimes the vessel is not able to stand it; but in two or three days, more or less, this intestine war ceases. The gross parts disengage themselves, and sink by virtue of their gravity. The more subtile parts get

likewise loose, and evaporate by their levities; and thus the wine comes to it’s natural state. This is the very thing which would have happened to the poetical chaos. The contrariety of the principles confusedly jumbled together, would have produced a violent fermentation, which, however, at the end of a certain space of time would have caused the precipitation of the terrestrial bodies, and the exaltation of the spirituous part; and in a word, the proper arrangement of each body according to its gravity and levity. So that there is nothing more inconsistent with reason and experience than to admit a chaos of eternal duration, though it had comprehended all the force which has appeared in nature since the formation of the world. It ought to be well observed, that, what we call the general laws of nature, the laws of motion, the mechanical principles, is the very same thing with what Ovid and the Peripatetics call heat, cold, moisture, drought, gravity, and levity. They pretended that all the force, and all the activity of nature, all the principles of the generation and alteration of bodies, were comprehended in the sphere of these six qualities. Since, therefore, they admitted them in the chaos, they necessarily acknowledged in it all the same virtue which produces in the world generation and corruption, winds, rains, &c.

Hence arises another objection of almost as much weight as the preceding ones. Ovid, and those whose opinions he has paraphrased, had recourse, without any necessity, to the ministry of God for disentangling the chaos; for they acknowledged, that it included all the internal force, which was capable of separating the parts, and of allotting each element its proper situation; what occasion therefore had they, after this, for calling in an external cause? Was not this imitating the bad poets, who in their dramatical pieces introduced a god upon the stage, to remove a very inconsiderable perplexity? To reason right upon the

production of the world, we ought to consider God as the author of matter, and as the first and sole principle of motion. If we cannot raise our thoughts to the idea of a creation, properly so called, we shall never get clear of all the difficulties that surround that subject; and to which soever side we turn, we must affirm things to which our reason cannot reconcile itself. If matter be self-existent, we cannot well conceive, that God either could, or should give it motion; it would be independent of any other thing, as to the reality of its existence; why, therefore, should it not have the power to exist always in the same place with respect to each of its parts? Why should it be constrained to change its situation at the pleasure of another substance? Add to this, that if matter had been moved by an external principle, it would be a sign that its necessary and independent existence are separate and distinct from motion; the result of which is, that its natural state is that of rest, and consequently God could not move it without disordering the nature of things, there being nothing more suitable to order than to follow the eternal and necessary institution of nature. Of this I speak more at large in other places. But of all the errors which are consequent from that of rejecting the creation, there is none, in my opinion, so small, as the supposing, that if God is not the cause of the existence of matter, he is at least the first mover of bodies, and in that quality the author of elementary properties, the author of the order and form we see in nature. The supposition of his being the first mover of matter, is a principle whence this consequence naturally flows, that he formed the heavens and the earth, the air and the sea. and is the architect of this great and marvellous edifice which we call the world. But if you strip him of that quality of first mover; if you affirm that matter moved itself independently of him, and had the diversity of forms of itself; that, with respect to some of its parts, its motion tended to the centre, and with respect to others, towards the circumference; that it contained particles of fire, particles of water, particles of air, and particles of earth:—if, with Ovid, I say, you affirm all these things, you employ God needlessly and to no purpose in the construction of the world. Nature might have done very well without the assistance of God; it had sufficient power to separate the particles of the elements, and to assemble those of the same class. Aristotle apprehended this truth very well, and had a much juster notion of it than Plato, who admitted a disorderly motion in the elementary matter, before the production of the world. Aristotle makes it appear that this supposition destroyed itself, since, unless we have recourse to a progress in infinitum, motion in the elements must have been natural. If it was natural, some tended to the centre, and others to the circumference; and consequently ranged themselves in such a manner as was necessary for forming the world such as it now appears: so that, during the time of that disorderly motion, there was a world antecedent to the world, which is a contradiction. He observes in consequence of this, and with a great deal of reason, that Anaxagoras, who admitted no motion antecedent to the first formation of the world, had a clearer idea of this matter than the rest.

The modern Peripatetics, the most zealous for evangelical orthodoxy, could find no fault in this discourse of Aristotle: for they own, that the alterative and motive qualities of the four elements are sufficient for the production of all the effects of nature. They only introduce God as the preserver of these elementary qualities, of which he is the first cause, or else make him only interpose his general concurrence; and they agree that, excepting this, they perform the whole, and, in the quality of a second cause, are the complete principle of all

generation. So that a scholastic divine would readily own, that if the four elements had existed independently of God, with all the faculties which they now enjoy, they would have formed of themselves this machine of the world, and kept it up in the state wherein it now appears. He must therefore acknowledge two great faults in the doctrine of the chaos. One, and indeed the principal, is, that it takes from God the creation of matter, and the production of the qualities peculiar to the fire, to the air, to the earth, and to the sea. The other, after taking this away from him, introduces him without necessity upon the stage of the world to adjust the places of the four elements. Our new philosophers, who have rejected the qualities and faculties of the Peripatetic Philosophy, would find the same faults in Ovid’s description of the chaos; for what they call general laws of motion, principles of mechanism, modifications of the matter, figure, situation and order of the particles, import nothing else but that active and passive virtue of nature, which the Peripatetics understand, under the terms of alterative and motive qualities of the four elements. Since, therefore, according to the doctrines of the Peripatetics, those four bodies, placed according to their natural levity and gravity, are a principle sufficient for all generations; the Cartesians, the Gassendists, and other modern philosophers, must maintain, that the motion, situation, and figure, of the parts of matter, are sufficient for the production of all natural effects, without excepting even the general disposition which has placed the earth, the air, water, and stars, where we now see them. Thus, the true cause of the world, and of the effects produced in it, is not different from the cause which gave motion to the parts of matter, whether it assigned at the same time to each atom a determinate figure, as the Gassendists will have it, or that it only gave those parts, being all cubical, an impulse, which, by the duration of motion, reduced to certain laws, would afterwards make them assume all sorts of figures, pursuant to the hypothesis of the Cartesians, Both the one and the other must consequently agree, that if matter had been such before the generation of the world, as Ovid pretends, it would have been capable of disengaging itself from the chaos by its own proper power, and to assume the form of the world, without the assistance of God. They must, therefore, charge Ovid with having committed two blunders; one, in supposing that matter, without the assistance of the Deity, contained the seeds of all the mixed bodies, heat, motion, &c., and the other, in saying that, without the divine interposition, it could not have brought itself out of its state of confusion. This is giving too much, and too little, on these two respective occasions: it is neglecting help when it is most wanted, and seeking it when it is not necessary.

I know some do not approve of Des Cartes’ fiction concerning the manner how the world might have been formed. Some ridicule it, and think it injurious to God; others charge it either with falsities or with impossibilities. To the former it may be answered, that they do not understand the subject, and that if they did, they would own, that nothing is more proper to give a lofty idea of the infinite wisdom of God, than to affirm that, out of a matter that had no manner of form, he could make this world in a certain time, by the bare preservation of the motion once given, and reduced to a few simple and general laws. As to what concerns those who reject the particulars of Des Cartes’ system, as containing some things contrary to the laws of mechanics, and the real state of the celestial vortices as they have been discovered by astronomers, I shall only reply to them, that this does not hinder the main of his hypothesis from being just and

reasonable; and I am fully persuaded, that Mr Newton, Sir Isaac Newton. ⁸⁶ the most formidable of all the animadverters, does not doubt but that the actual system of the world might be the production of a few mechanical laws, established by the Author of all things; for if you suppose bodies determined to move in straight lines, and to tend either towards the centre, or towards the circumference, as often as the resistance of other bodies obliges them to a circular motion, you establish a principle which will necessarily produce great varieties in matter; and if it do not form this system, it will form another.

The very Epicurean hypothesis, though so foolish and extravagant, affords wherewith to form a certain world. Do but once allow them the different figures of atoms, with the inalienable power of moving themselves according to the laws of gravity, and mutually repelling one another, and reflecting in such or such a manner, according as they strike one another in a perpendicular or oblique direction—grant them but this, and you cannot deny that the fortuitous concourse of these corpuscles may form masses, containing hard and fluid bodies, cold and heat, opacity and transparency, vortices, &c.; all that can be denied them is, the possibility of chances producing such a system of bodies as our world; in which there are so many things which persevere so long in their regularity, so many animal machines a thousand times more ingenious than those of human art, which necessarily require an intelligent direction.

The last observation which remains to be illustrated, relates to what Ovid says, that the war of the four elements having been continual in the chaos, was terminated by the authority of God who formed the world. Does not this imply that, ever since that time, the elements have been at peace with one another? And is not this a pretension very ill founded and

contradicted by experience? Has war ever ceased between heat and cold, moisture and dryness, levity and gravity, fire and water, &c.? Since Ovid complied with the hypothesis of the four elements, he ought to have known that the antipathy of their qualities never dies, and that they never agree either by peace or truce, not even when they compose a temperament of mixed bodies. They never enter into such compositions but after a struggle, where they have reciprocally disabled one another; and, if their quarrel happen to be interrupted for some moments, it is because the resistance of the one is precisely equal to the activity of the others. When they can do no more, they take breath again; but are always ready to harrass and destroy one another as soon as their strength permits. The equilibrium cannot last long; for every minute there comes some assistance to the one or to the other; and, of necessity, the one must lose what the other gains. So that Ovid must have seen that, still, as well as at the time of the chaos, their war extended throughout, and in the smallest recesses of the same mixed bodies:

- - - - Corpore in uno
Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondéré habentia pondus.
Ovid. Metam. lib. 1, ver. 18.

Internal war through every mass exists.
The cold and hot, the dry and humid fight,
The soft and hard, the heavy and the light.
Sewell

The laws of this engagement are, that the weakest may be entirely ruined, according to the full extent cf the power of the strongest. Neither clemency nor pity have there any place; there is no hearkening to any proposals of accommodation. This intestine w ar makes way for the dissolution of the compound, and sooner or later compasses that end. Living bodies

are more exposed to it than others, and would quickly sink under it, if nature did not furnish them with recruits; but at last the conflict of natural heat and radical moisture proves mortal to them. The power of time, which consumes every thing, and which Ovid describes so well in the fifteenth book of his Metamorphosis, has no other foundation, than the conflict of bodies

Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas,
Omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus ævi
Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte.
Ovid. Metam. lib. xv. ver. 234.

All things at last shall sink beneath the rage,
Of slow devouring time, and envious age.

Our poet in making this description, had forgotten what he had advanced in the chapter of the chaos. We need only compare the beginning of his work with the end of it, to prove him guilty of contradiction. In the first book he affirms, that a stop was put to the discord of the elements; and in the fifteenth he tells us they destroy one another by turns, and that Nothing perseveres in the same state.

Nay, though he had not contradicted himself, we might censure him with a great deal of reason; for the world being a stage of vicissitudes, nothing could be more improper than to give peace to the four elements; and the cessation of the chaos should be so far from putting an end to their quarrels, that, on the contrary, it should have set them one against another, if they had been in mutual peace during the chaos. It is by their conflict that nature becomes fruitful; their concord would keep her barren, and without the implacable war which they make against one another wherever they meet, we should have no generations. The production of one thing is always the destruction of another.

Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante. Lucret. 1. 1. v. 671.

For when things change, and keep their form no more,
This is the death of what they were before.

“Generatio unius est corruptio alterius.” This is a philosophical axiom. So that Ovid should have presupposed that the god who allotted distinct stations to the four elements, enjoined them to fight without quarter, and to act the part of ambitious conquerors, who leave no stone unturned to invade the possessions of their neighbours. The orders given them should have been like Dido’s wish.

Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore vires,
Littora littoribus contraria, fluctibus undas
Imprecor, arma armis, pugnent ipsique nepotes.
Virgil. Æneid. lib iv. ver. 627.

Our arms, our seas, our shores, oppos’d to theirs,
And the same hate descend on all our heirs.
Dryden.

And in effect, they act just as if they had received such orders; as if they were inspired with the warmest passion to put them in full execution. Cold enlarges its sphere as much as ever it can, and there destroys its enemy. Heat does the like; and these two qualities are by turns master of the field, the one in winter and the other in summer. They imitate those victorious armies, which after gaining a decisive battle, constrain their enemy to fly to his citadels, and pursuing him thither, lay siege to him, and reduce him to extremity. In the summer, cold flies to caverns and subterraneous cavities; and to prevent being entirely destroyed, redoubles the efforts of its resistance, and fortifies itself in the best manner it can, by the virtue called antiperistasis: and in winter heat takes the same course. The elementary philosophers, who thus

explain the effects of nature, tell us, that each quality strives in such a manner to vanquish the subjects it attacks, that, not satisfied with making them its vassals, and ordering them to wear its livery, it endeavours to transmute them into its own state; “ omne agens,” say they, “ intendit sibi assimilare passum - - -every agent endeavours to assimilate to itself that which it works upon.” Can one meet with a more hostile, and more ambitious animosity than this? Empedocles was mistaken in annexing to the four elements amity and enmity, the one for union, and the other for disunion. We agree with him, that the union and disunion of parts are highly necessary for the productions of nature; but it is certain, that amity has no hand in them; the sole discord, the sole antipathy of the elements assembles bodies in one place, and disperses them in another. These two qualities of Empedocles can be attributed at most but to living bodies; but air and fire, water and earth, have no other attendant, except enmity.

Living bodies act very conformably to the order which Ovid should have supposed to be given, by the author of the disentangling of the chaos,viz. that of mutual destruction; for it is literally true, that they subsist only by destruction; every thing which serves for the support of their life, loses its form, and changes its state and species. Vegetables destroy the constitution and qualities of all the juices they can attract: and animals commit the same ravage upon every thing which serves them for food. They eat up one another, and there are several kinds of beasts which make war upon one another, for no other end but to devour such of their enemies as they shall happen to kill. In some countries men follow the same course, and every where they are great destroyers. I take no notice here of the slaughter arising from ambition, avarice, or cruelty, or from such other passions as are the causes of war; I speak only

of the effects of the care taken to feed the body. In this regard, man is such a ruining, destroying, principle, that in case all other animals destroyed as much in proportion, the earth would not be able to furnish them with provisions. When we see in the streets and markets of great cities, such a prodigious multitude of herbs and fruits, and of an infinite number of other things allotted for the food of the inhabitants, would not one be ready to say, here is provision for a week? would one imagine, that this shew is to be renewed every day? Would one believe, that so small an opening as the human mouth, were a gulf, an abyss, large enough to swallow up all that in a little time? Nothing but experience could make us believe it. In the Saint-Evremoniana, I met with these words: “ it is said, that at Paris there are four thousand people who sell oysters, and that fifteen hundred large oxen, and above sixteen thousand sheep, calves, or hogs, besides a prodigious quantity of poultry, and wild fowls, are consumed every day.” Judge what may be the case in those countries, where they feed more upon flesh, and are greater eaters.

Such being therefore the condition of nature, that beings are produced and preserved by the destruction of one another, our poet should not have affirmed, that the war of the elements was pacified when the world began, and the Chaos ended. It was enough to have said, that the situation and power of the combatants were regulated and balanced in such a manner, that their continual hostilities should not produce the destruction of the work: but only the vicissitudes that are its ornaments; per questo variar natura è bella, - - - - - - nature is beautiful by this variety, as the Italians say. Some perhaps will imagine, that the war, not ceasing upon the regulation of these principles, it was not so much a cessation of the Chaos, as a rough draught of the disentanglement; and that after this rough draught, that

is, the world we live in, shall have continued a certain number of ages, it will be succeeded by a much finer world; from which discord will be banished. And they will pretend, perhaps, that St Paul confirms this opinion, in saying, that all creatures groan for their deliverance from the state of vanity and corruption in which they find themselves. But let them say what they please, I shall not amuse myself with the examination of their notions.

It is to be observed, that from the mechanical principles, by which the new philosophers explain the effects of nature, it is easier to comprehend the perpetual war of bodies, than from the philosophy of the four elements. For all the action of the six elementary qualities, being nothing else, according to the new philosophy, but local motion, it is manifest that each body attacks every thing it meets, and that the parts of matter tend only to shock, break, and compress one another, according to all the rigour of the laws of superior powers.

But if we set aside the arguments produced in the foregoing remark, and grant that Ovid might affirm, generally speaking, that the creatures were released from the Chaos, yet we might still be allowed to say, that he could not in particular include man within that favour? I here only consider the views we may have when destitute of the light of revelation. In this state, who can forbear thinking that the horrors of the Chaos still subsist with regard to man? For, not to mention the perpetual conflict of the elementary qualities, which reigns something more in his machine than in most other material beings, what war is there not between his soul and his body, between his reason and his senses, between his sensitive and his reasonable souli reason ought to calm this disorder, and pacify these intestine jars; but it is both judge and party, and its decrees are not executed; but only increase the mischief.

Note, too, that I have considered the Chaos in man, only with respect to the intestine war which every one feels within himself. If I had taken into consideration the differences between nations and nations, and even between neighbour and neighbour, with all the hypocrisies, frauds, and violences, &c. that attend them, I should have found a much larger and more fertile field, in confirmation of what I proposed to prove. Voltaire in the article Ovid in his Philosophical Dictionary, makes the poet thus reply:—“ You are wrong in supposing that my elements originally possessed all the qualities which they do at present. They had no qualities; matter existed naked, unformed and powerless, and when I say that in my Chaos, heat was mingled with cold, and dryness with humidity, I only employ these expressions to signify that there was neither cold nor heat, nor wet nor dry, which are qualities that God has placed in our sensations, and not in matter. I have not made that mistake of which you accuse me. Your Cartesians and your Gassendists commit oversights, with their atoms and their cubic particles, and their imaginations deal as little in truth as my metamorphoses. I prefer Daphne changed into a laurel, and Narcissus into a flower, to subtle matter changed into suns, and dense matter transformed into earth and water. I have given you fables for fables, and your philosophers have given you fables for truth.” ⁸⁷