if I assign a cause for any event, is it any objection, PHILO, that I
cannot assign the cause of that cause, and answer every new question
which may incessantly be started? And what philosophers could possibly
submit to so rigid a rule? philosophers, who confess ultimate causes to
be totally unknown; and are sensible, that the most refined principles
into which they trace the phenomena, are still to them as inexplicable as
these phenomena themselves are to the vulgar. The order and arrangement
of nature, the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and
intention of every part and organ; all these bespeak in the clearest
language an intelligent cause or author. The heavens and the earth join
in the same testimony: The whole chorus of Nature raises one hymn to the
praises of its Creator. You alone, or almost alone, disturb this general
harmony. You start abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections: You ask me,
what is the cause of this cause? I know not; I care not; that concerns
not me. I have found a Deity; and here I stop my inquiry. Let those go
further, who are wiser or more enterprising.

I pretend to be neither, replied PHILO: And for that very reason, I
should never perhaps have attempted to go so far; especially when I am
sensible, that I must at last be contented to sit down with the same
answer, which, without further trouble, might have satisfied me from the
beginning. If I am still to remain in utter ignorance of causes, and can
absolutely give an explication of nothing, I shall never esteem it any
advantage to shove off for a moment a difficulty, which, you acknowledge,
must immediately, in its full force, recur upon me. Naturalists indeed
very justly explain particular effects by more general causes, though
these general causes themselves should remain in the end totally
inexplicable; but they never surely thought it satisfactory to explain a
particular effect by a particular cause, which was no more to be
accounted for than the effect itself. An ideal system, arranged of