These would all be possible; but being all
equally possible, he would never of himself give a satisfactory
account for his preferring one of them to the rest. Experience
alone can point out to him the true cause of any phenomenon.
Now, according to this method of reasoning, D/EMEA\, it
follows, (and is, indeed, tacitly allowed by C/LEANTHES\
himself,) that order, arrangement, or the adjustment of final
causes, is not of itself any proof of design; but only so far as
it has been experienced to proceed from that principle. For aught
we can know a priori, matter may contain the source or spring of
order originally within itself, as well as mind does; and there
is no more difficulty in conceiving, that the several elements,
from an internal unknown cause, may fall into the most exquisite
arrangement, than to conceive that their ideas, in the great
universal mind, from a like internal unknown cause, fall into
that arrangement. The equal possibility of both these
suppositions is allowed. But, by experience, we find, (according
to C/LEANTHES\), that there is a difference between them. Throw
several pieces of steel together, without shape or form; they
will never arrange themselves so as to compose a watch. Stone,
and mortar, and wood, without an architect, never erect a house.
But the ideas in a human mind, we see, by an unknown,
inexplicable economy, arrange themselves so as to form the plan
of a watch or house.
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