Nothing short of that can content our vanity.

Why can we not contrive to throw into our talk less pride and more philosophy?
If nature offers us some knot that is hard to untie, let us leave it for what it is; do not let us employ for cutting it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in turn a new knot for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first.

An Indian tells you that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of an elephant.

And the elephant! It stands on a tortoise.

And the tortoise?
what sustains that ?...