But what sticks most with you, I observe, is the
representation which C/LEANTHES\ has made of the argument a
posteriori; and finding that that argument is likely to escape
your hold and vanish into air, you think it so disguised, that
you can scarcely believe it to be set in its true light. Now,
however much I may dissent, in other respects, from the dangerous
principles of C/LEANTHES\, I must allow that he has fairly
represented that argument; and I shall endeavour so to state the
matter to you, that you will entertain no further scruples with
regard to it.
Were a man to abstract from every thing which he knows or
has seen, he would be altogether incapable, merely from his own
ideas, to determine what kind of scene the universe must be, or
to give the preference to one state or situation of things above
another. For as nothing which he clearly conceives could be
esteemed impossible or implying a contradiction, every chimera of
his fancy would be upon an equal footing; nor could he assign any
just reason why he adheres to one idea or system, and rejects the
others which are equally possible.
Again; after he opens his eyes, and contemplates the world
as it really is, it would be impossible for him at first to
assign the cause of any one event, much less of the whole of
things, or of the universe. He might set his fancy a rambling;
and she might bring him in an infinite variety of reports and
representations.
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