There are many inexplicable difficulties in the
works of Nature, which, if we allow a perfect author to be proved
a priori, are easily solved, and become only seeming
difficulties, from the narrow capacity of man, who cannot trace
infinite relations. But according to your method of reasoning,
these difficulties become all real; and perhaps will be insisted
on, as new instances of likeness to human art and contrivance. At
least, you must acknowledge, that it is impossible for us to
tell, from our limited views, whether this system contains any
great faults, or deserves any considerable praise, if compared to
other possible, and even real systems. Could a peasant, if the
Aeneid were read to him, pronounce that poem to be absolutely
faultless, or even assign to it its proper rank among the
productions of human wit, he, who had never seen any other
production?
But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must
still remain uncertain, whether all the excellences of the work
can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what
an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter
who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And
what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic,
who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long
succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes,
corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually
improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled,
throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much
labour lost, many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but
continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art
of world-making.
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