certain seeds, which, being scattered into the surrounding chaos,
vegetate into new worlds. A comet, for instance, is the seed of a world;
and after it has been fully ripened, by passing from sun to sun, and star
to star, it is at last tossed into the unformed elements which every
where surround this universe, and immediately sprouts up into a new
system.

Or if, for the sake of variety (for I see no other advantage), we should
suppose this world to be an animal; a comet is the egg of this animal:
and in like manner as an ostrich lays its egg in the sand, which, without
any further care, hatches the egg, and produces a new animal; so...

I understand you, says DEMEA: But what wild, arbitrary suppositions are
these! What data have you for such extraordinary conclusions? And is the
slight, imaginary resemblance of the world to a vegetable or an animal
sufficient to establish the same inference with regard to both? Objects,
which are in general so widely different, ought they to be a standard for
each other?

Right, cries PHILO: This is the topic on which I have all along insisted.
I have still asserted, that we have no data to establish any system of
cosmogony. Our experience, so imperfect in itself, and so limited both in
extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the
whole of things. But if we must needs fix on some hypothesis; by what
rule, pray, ought we to determine our choice? Is there any other rule
than the greater similarity of the objects compared? And does not a plant
or an animal, which springs from vegetation or generation, bear a
stronger resemblance to the world, than does any artificial machine,
which arises from reason and design?