Did I show you the particular causes of each
individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I
should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me,
what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently
explained in explaining the cause of the parts.
Though the reasonings which you have urged, C/LEANTHES\, may
well excuse me, said P/HILO\, from starting any further
difficulties, yet I cannot forbear insisting still upon another
topic. It is observed by arithmeticians, that the products of 9,
compose always either 9, or some lesser product of 9, if you add
together all the characters of which any of the former products
is composed. Thus, of 18, 27, 36, which are products of 9, you
make 9 by adding 1 to 8, 2 to 7, 3 to 6. Thus, 369 is a product
also of 9; and if you add 3, 6, and 9, you make 18, a lesser
product of 9.23 To a superficial observer, so wonderful a
regularity may be admired as the effect either of chance or
design: but a skilful algebraist immediately concludes it to be
the work of necessity, and demonstrates, that it must for ever
result from the nature of these numbers. Is it not probable, I
ask, that the whole economy of the universe is conducted by a
like necessity, though no human algebra can furnish a key which
solves the difficulty? And instead of admiring the order of
natural beings, may it not happen, that, could we penetrate into
the intimate nature of bodies, we should clearly see why it was
absolutely impossible they could ever admit of any other
disposition? So dangerous is it to introduce this idea of
necessity into the present question! and so naturally does it
afford an inference directly opposite to the religious
hypothesis!
But dropping all these abstractions, continued P/HILO\, and
confining ourselves to more familiar topics, I shall venture to
add an observation, that the argument a priori has seldom been
found very convincing, except to people of a metaphysical head,
who have accustomed themselves to abstract reasoning, and who,
finding from mathematics, that the understanding frequently leads
to truth through obscurity, and, contrary to first appearances,
have transferred the same habit of thinking to subjects where it
ought not to have place.
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