xcii KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



M. Blanchet gives the story in the preface to his 

 translation of Lucretius, and represents Laplace 

 as proclaiming himself to be an Atheist. M. 

 Barthelemy Saint- Hilaire, in the Preface to his 

 translation of Aristotle's Treatise on the Heavens, 

 takes the same view, and argues earnestly 

 against it. But M. Faye gives the saying 

 a different interpretation, and exonerates Laplace 

 entirely from the charge of Atheism. He holds 

 that it meant only that Laplace did not accept 

 Newton's hypothesis of the intervention of God, 

 from time to time, to modify the movements of 

 the world, especially in its perturbations, 'and that 

 he (Laplace) had not had need of such a sup- 

 position.' It was not God that he treated as an 

 hypothesis, but his direct intervention at a deter- 

 minate point. In support of this view, M. Faye 

 maintains that Laplace 'did not profess Atheism/)/ 

 and he tells us, on Arago's authority, that shortly 

 before his death he begged that the anecdote be 

 suppressed. Nor were his last pathetic words, * ce 

 que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous 

 ignorons est immense,' those of a dogmatic Atheist ; 

 much rather do they remind us of the intellectual 

 humility of Newton. 



However it may have been with Laplace, there 

 can be no question of the sincerity of Kant's Theism 

 from first to last. 



At this early stage of his thought, as all through, 

 the existence of God and the rationality of Religion 



