moment or importance. A change in bulk, situation, arrangement, age,
disposition of the air, or surrounding bodies; any of these particulars
may be attended with the most unexpected consequences: And unless the
objects be quite familiar to us, it is the highest temerity to expect
with assurance, after any of these changes, an event similar to that
which before fell under our observation. The slow and deliberate steps of
philosophers here, if any where, are distinguished from the precipitate
march of the vulgar, who, hurried on by the smallest similitude, are
incapable of all discernment or consideration.

But can you think, CLEANTHES, that your usual phlegm and philosophy have
been preserved in so wide a step as you have taken, when you compared to
the universe houses, ships, furniture, machines, and, from their
similarity in some circumstances, inferred a similarity in their causes?
Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other
animals, is no more than one of the springs and principles of the
universe, as well as heat or cold, attraction or repulsion, and a hundred
others, which fall under daily observation. It is an active cause, by
which some particular parts of nature, we find, produce alterations on
other parts. But can a conclusion, with any propriety, be transferred
from parts to the whole? Does not the great disproportion bar all
comparison and inference? From observing the growth of a hair, can we
learn any thing concerning the generation of a man? Would the manner of a
leaf's blowing, even though perfectly known, afford us any instruction
concerning the vegetation of a tree?

But, allowing that we were to take the operations of one part of nature
upon another, for the foundation of our judgement concerning the origin
of the whole, (which never can be admitted,) yet why select so minute, so
weak, so bounded a principle, as the reason and design of animals is