Meanwhile it happened that M. le Clerc had inserted in his Select Library an extract from the Intellectual System of the late Mr. Cudworth, and had explained therein certain ‘plastic natures’ which this admirable author applied to the formation of animals.  M. Bayle believed (see the continuation of Divers Thoughts on the Comet, ch. 21, art. 11) that, these natures being without cognition, in establishing them one weakened the argument which proves, through the marvellous formation of things, that the universe must have an intelligent Cause.  M. le Clerc replied (4th art. of the 5th vol. of his Select Library) that these natures required to be directed by divine wisdom.  M. Bayle insisted (7th article of the Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants, August 1704) that direction alone was not sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to be a mere instrument of God, in which case direction would be needless.  My system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to send a short essay to the illustrious author of the Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants, which he inserted in the month of May 1705, art. 9.  In this I endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is sufficient to produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of other plastic natures, provided there be added thereto the preformation already completely organic in the seeds of the bodies that come into existence, contained in those of the bodies whence they spring, right back to the primary seeds.  This could only proceed from the Author of things, infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating all in the beginning in due order, had pre-established there all order and artifice that was to be.  There is no chaos in the inward nature of things, and there is organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition proceeds from God.  More and more of it would come to light if we pressed closer our examination of the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue to observe it even if we could go on to infinity, like Nature, and make subdivision as continuous in our knowledge as Nature has made it in fact.

In order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, I made use of a Pre-established Harmony, that is to say, of the same means I had used to explain another marvel, namely the correspondence of soul with body, [65] wherein I proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the principles I had employed.  It seems that this reminded M. Bayle of my system of accounting for this correspondence, which he had examined formerly.  He declared (in chapter 180 of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, p. 1253) that he did not believe God could give to matter or to any other cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea and the knowledge of organic nature.  Also he was not yet disposed to believe that God, with all his power over Nature