Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the Ubiquity of Harmonies

Abstrakt

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), who is remembered today primarily for his novel Paul and Virginie, was mainly interested in showing the grandeur of God through his investigations of nature. He viewed nature from the teleological perspective: everything in it has some reason and the human task is to detect this reason. He provided hundreds of examples of such reasons, on many occasions exposing himself to derision. The article shows the importance of orderliness of nature, as it manifests itself in interlocking harmonies, as the way he followed to establish the theological conclusion regarding the existence and the attributes of God.