In like manner, when
it is asked, what cause produces order in the ideas of the
Supreme Being; can any other reason be assigned by you,
Anthropomorphites, than that it is a rational faculty, and that
such is the nature of the Deity? But why a similar answer will
not be equally satisfactory in accounting for the order of the
world, without having recourse to any such intelligent creator as
you insist on, may be difficult to determine. It is only to say,
that such is the nature of material objects, and that they are
all originally possessed of a faculty of order and proportion.
These are only more learned and elaborate ways of confessing our
ignorance; nor has the one hypothesis any real advantage above
the other, except in its greater conformity to vulgar prejudices.
You have displayed this argument with great emphasis,
replied C/LEANTHES\: You seem not sensible how easy it is to
answer it. Even in common life, if I assign a cause for any
event, is it any objection, P/HILO\, that I cannot assign the
cause of that cause, and answer every new question which may
incessantly be started? And what philosophers could possibly
submit to so rigid a rule? philosophers, who confess ultimate
causes to be totally unknown; and are sensible, that the most
refined principles into which they trace the phenomena, are still
to them as inexplicable as these phenomena themselves are to the
vulgar. The order and arrangement of nature, the curious
adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every
part and organ; all these bespeak in the clearest language an
intelligent cause or author.
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