United States or Heard Island and McDonald Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
D’Holbach, the author of the “System de la Nature,” was an Atheist, so were his assistants in the production of that work. Voltaire addresses the author of that work in the following words: “In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you, with Pascal, ‘choose the safest.’ There is no safety in uncertainty.
A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d’Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter. Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements, was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness.
Word Of The Day