Suppose, therefore, that you enter into your library, thus
peopled by natural volumes, containing the most refined reason
and most exquisite beauty; could you possibly open one of them,
and doubt, that its original cause bore the strongest analogy to
mind and intelligence? When it reasons and discourses; when it
expostulates, argues, and enforces its views and topics; when it
applies sometimes to the pure intellect, sometimes to the
affections; when it collects, disposes, and adorns every
consideration suited to the subject; could you persist in
asserting, that all this, at the bottom, had really no meaning;
and that the first formation of this volume in the loins of its
original parent proceeded not from thought and design? Your
obstinacy, I know, reaches not that degree of firmness: even your
sceptical play and wantonness would be abashed at so glaring an
absurdity.
But if there be any difference, P/HILO\, between this
supposed case and the real one of the universe, it is all to the
advantage of the latter. The anatomy of an animal affords many
stronger instances of design than the perusal of L/IVY\ or
T/ACITUS\; and any objection which you start in the former case,
by carrying me back to so unusual and extraordinary a scene as
the first formation of worlds, the same objection has place on
the supposition of our vegetating library. Choose, then, your
party, P/HILO\, without ambiguity or evasion; assert either that
a rational volume is no proof of a rational cause, or admit of a
similar cause to all the works of nature.
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