JESUIT.—In spite of your left foot, and the wench of the grandfather of the founder of the _Feuillants_, I shall ever be of opinion that the horrible action committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent, which might very well not have happened: for, after all, man is certainly a free agent.
BRAHMIN.—I do not know what you mean by a free agent. I can affix no certain idea to these words. To be free, is to do whatever we think proper, and not to will whatever we please. All I know of the matter is, that Ravaillac voluntarily committed the crime, of which he was destined by fate to be the instrument. This crime was no more than a link of the great chain of destiny.
JESUIT.—You may say what you will, but the affairs of this world are far from having any such dependence as you are pleased to think. What signifies, for example, this useless conversation of ours, here on the shores of the East Indies?
BRAHMIN.—What you and I say in conversation is doubtless sufficiently insignificant; but, for all that, were you not here, the machine of the universe would be extremely changed from what it is.
JESUIT.—There your Brahmin reverence is pleased to advance a huge paradox truly.
BRAHMIN.—Your Ignatian fathership may believe me or no, as you like it. But assuredly, we should never have had this conversation together, had you not come into the East Indies. You had never made this voyage, had not your St. Ignatius de Loyola been wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, or had not the king of Portugal persisted in discovering the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Now, prithee, did not the king of Portugal, with the help of the compass, entirely change the face of this world of ours? But it was first of all necessary that a certain Neapolitan should make this discovery of the compass; now tell me, if you have the face, that everything is not wholly subservient to one constant and uniform tenor of action; which by indissoluble, but invisible, concatenation, unites all that lives, or acts, or dies, or suffers on the surface of our globe?
JESUIT.—What then would become of our future contingents?
BRAHMIN.—What care I what become of them? but yet the order established by the hand of an eternal and almighty God must certainly exist forever.