4. Man has received a share of intelligence by which he can avert, or at least greatly palliate the effects of all natural plagues. The more knowledge he acquires, the farther he advances in civilization, the less disastrous these plagues will be. With a wisely provident social organization he will be able to neutralize the consequences of them, and in time, evade them entirely. Thus for these plagues which annoy us now, but which have their use in the general order of nature, God has given to men, in the faculties by which he has endowed his mind, the means of paralyzing their effects in the future.
It is thus that he renders healthy insalubrious countries; that he destroys pestilential miasmas; that he fertilizes waste lands and applies himself to preserve them from inundation; that he constructs healthier habitations, stronger to resist winds so necessary for the purification of the atmosphere; that he is sheltered from the inclemency of the weather. It is thus that necessity has created science by the aid of which he improves the condition of the habitable parts of the globe, and augments the general well-being.
