While we are uncertain
whether there is one deity or many; whether the deity or deities,
to whom we owe our existence, be perfect or imperfect,
subordinate or supreme, dead or alive, what trust or confidence
can we repose in them? What devotion or worship address to them?
What veneration or obedience pay them? To all the purposes of
life the theory of religion becomes altogether useless: and even
with regard to speculative consequences, its uncertainty,
according to you, must render it totally precarious and
unsatisfactory.
To render it still more unsatisfactory, said P/HILO\, there
occurs to me another hypothesis, which must acquire an air of
probability from the method of reasoning so much insisted on by
C/LEANTHES\. That like effects arise from like causes: this
principle he supposes the foundation of all religion. But there
is another principle of the same kind, no less certain, and
derived from the same source of experience; that where several
known circumstances are observed to be similar, the unknown will
also be found similar. Thus, if we see the limbs of a human body,
we conclude that it is also attended with a human head, though
hid from us. Thus, if we see, through a chink in a wall, a small
part of the sun, we conclude, that, were the wall removed, we
should see the whole body. In short, this method of reasoning is
so obvious and familiar, that no scruple can ever be made with
regard to its solidity.
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