How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint?  How long, with vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities?  Will he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions of truth and reason?  The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he sees it not!  The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it not!  Unjust man! if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which fascinates thy senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of reason, interrogate these ruins!  Read the lessons which they present to thee!  And you, evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!  Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust accusations!  Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who calumniates them both!

What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law, sports with the destiny of mortals?  What is that unjust necessity, which confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly?  In what consist the anathemas of heaven over this land?  Where is that divine malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields?  Say, monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the earth its motion?  Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of space?  Do the seas no longer emit their vapors?  Are the rains and the dews suspended in the air?  Do the mountains withhold their springs?  Are the streams dried up?  And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?  Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to nature?  Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants, the blessings they formerly dispensed?  If nothing hath changed in the creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why then are not the present what former generations were?  Ah! it is falsely that you accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you accuse God as the cause of your evils!  Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are desolate, if these powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God who has caused their ruin?  Is it his hand which has overthrown these walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the hand of man?  Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your cities, and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people, burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is it the hand of man?  And when, after the destruction of crops, famine has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or the mad fury of mortals?  When, sinking under famine, the people have fed on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God which sends it, or the folly of man?  When war, famine and pestilence, have swept away the inhabitants,