The position of the writer of the Philosophical Thoughts is distinctly theistic.  Yet there is at least one striking passage to show how forcibly some of the arguments on the other side impressed him.  “I open,” says Diderot, “the pages of a celebrated professor, and I read—­’Atheists, I concede to you that movement is essential to matter; what conclusion do you draw from that?  That the world results from the fortuitous concourse of atoms?  You might as well say that Homer’s Iliad, or Voltaire’s Henriade, is a result of the fortuitous concourse of written characters.’  Now for my part, I should be very sorry to use that reasoning to an atheist; the comparison would give him a very easy game to play.  According to the laws of the analysis of chances, he would say to me, I ought not to be surprised that a thing comes to pass when it is possible, and the difficulty of the event is compensated by the number of throws.  There is a certain number of throws in which I would safely back myself to bring 100,000 sixes at once with 100,000 dice.  Whatever the definite number of the letters with which I am invited fortuitously to produce the Iliad, there is a certain definite number of throws which would make the proposal advantageous for me; nay, my advantage would be infinite if the quantity of throws accorded to me were infinite.  Now, you grant to me that matter exists from all eternity, and that movement is essential to it.  In return for this concession, I will suppose with you that the world has no limits; that the multitude of atoms is infinite, and that this order, which astonishes you, nowhere contradicts itself.  Well, from these reciprocal admissions there follows nothing else unless it be this, that the possibility of engendering the universe fortuitously is very small, but that the number of throws is infinite, or in other words, that the difficulty of the event is more than sufficiently compensated by the multitude of the throws.  Therefore, if anything ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition that,—­matter being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps in the infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of admirable arrangements,—­none of these admirable arrangements would have been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which matter successively took on.  Therefore the mind ought to be more astonished at the hypothetical duration of chaos."[37] (Sec. 21.)

In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and turned towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be the best after their own.  Even here he is still in the atmosphere of negation.  He desires no more than to show that revealed religion confers no advantages which are not already secured by natural religion.  “The revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not find recommended and practised under