Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires

kings and of their ministers? Is it the venality of his decisions that overthrows the fortune of families, or the venality of the organs of the laws? Is it, finally, his passions which, under a thousand forms, torment individuals and peoples, or is it the passions of men? And if in the anguish of their evils they do not see the remedies, is it the ignorance of God that must be blamed, or their own ignorance? Cease then, O mortals, to accuse the fatality of fate or the judgments of the Divinity! If God is good, will he be the author of your punishment? If he is just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes? No, no, the caprice of which man complains is not the caprice of destiny; the obscurity where his reason goes astray is not the obscurity of God; the source of his calamities is not remote in the heavens; it is near him on the earth: it is not hidden in the heart of the Divinity; it resides in man himself, he carries it in his heart.

You murmur, and you say: how have unfaithful peoples enjoyed the benefits of the heavens and the earth? How are

holy races less fortunate than impious peoples? Fascinated man! where then is the contradiction that scandals you? Where is the enigma that you suppose to the justice of the heavens? I leave to yourself the balance of graces and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels observed the laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated intelligent labors on the order of the seasons and the course of the stars, should God have disturbed the equilibrium of the world to deceive their prudence? When their hands cultivated these countrysides with care and sweat, should he have diverted the rains, the fertilizing dews, and made thorns grow there? When, to fertilize this arid soil, their industry constructed aqueducts, dug canals, brought distant waters across the deserts, should he have dried up the springs of the mountains? should he have uprooted the harvests that art brought forth, devastated the countrysides that peace populated, overturned the cities that labor made flourish, and finally disturbed the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is this infidelity