SECT.  LXXVI.  The Epicureans confound the Works of Art with those of Nature.

All men who naturally suppose a sensible difference between the works of art and those of chance do consequently, though but implicitly, suppose that the combinations of atoms were not infinite—which supposition is very just.  This infinite succession of combinations of atoms is, as I showed before, a more absurd chimera than all the absurdities some men would explain by that false principle.  No number, either successive or continual, can be infinite; from whence it follows that the number of atoms cannot be infinite, that the succession of their various motions and combinations cannot be infinite, that the world cannot be eternal, and that we must find out a precise and fixed beginning of these successive combinations.  We must recur to a first individual in the generations of every species.  We must likewise find out the original and primitive form of every particle of matter that makes a part of the universe.  And as the successive changes of that matter must be limited in number, we must not admit in those different combinations but such as chance commonly produces; unless we acknowledge a Superior Being, who with the perfection of art made the wonderful works which chance could never have made.