eveloping the analogy between the laws of nature and stage machinery—also known as the merveilleux—Pluche elects to remain in the audience, subject to the illusion, rather than venture backstage in order to determine how the special effects are achieved.3 This acknowledgment of the implicit limitations of reason and the senses, subsequently dubbed epistemological modesty, left open the question of whether to attribute these effects to na-ture or the divine. Evidence of this dichotomy can be seen if we compare this analogy to another famed evocation of nature’s spectacle, that of Ber-nard de Fontenelle, who likened nature to the opera in his 1686 Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds). While Fontenelle, a philosopher, invoked the analogy to suggest the suf-ficiency of the laws of matter, Pluche, a priest, invoked it to demonstrate the existence of God.