form; they will never arrange themselves so as to compose a watch. Stone,
and mortar, and wood, without an architect, never erect a house. But the
ideas in a human mind, we see, by an unknown, inexplicable economy,
arrange themselves so as to form the plan of a watch or house.
Experience, therefore, proves, that there is an original principle of
order in mind, not in matter. From similar effects we infer similar
causes. The adjustment of means to ends is alike in the universe, as in a
machine of human contrivance. The causes, therefore, must be resembling.

I was from the beginning scandalised, I must own, with this resemblance,
which is asserted, between the Deity and human creatures; and must
conceive it to imply such a degradation of the Supreme Being as no sound
Theist could endure. With your assistance, therefore, DEMEA, I shall
endeavour to defend what you justly call the adorable mysteriousness of
the Divine Nature, and shall refute this reasoning of CLEANTHES, provided
he allows that I have made a fair representation of it.

When CLEANTHES had assented, PHILO, after a short pause, proceeded in the
following manner.

That all inferences, CLEANTHES, concerning fact, are founded on
experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the
supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar
effects similar causes; I shall not at present much dispute with you. But
observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just reasoners
proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases. Unless the
cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying
their past observation to any particular phenomenon. Every alteration of
circumstances occasions a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new
experiments to prove certainly, that the new circumstances are of no