But what is this vegetation and generation of which you talk? said DEMEA.
Can you explain their operations, and anatomise that fine internal
structure on which they depend?

As much, at least, replied PHILO, as CLEANTHES can explain the operations
of reason, or anatomise that internal structure on which it depends. But
without any such elaborate disquisitions, when I see an animal, I infer,
that it sprang from generation; and that with as great certainty as you
conclude a house to have been reared by design. These words, generation,
reason, mark only certain powers and energies in nature, whose effects
are known, but whose essence is incomprehensible; and one of these
principles, more than the other, has no privilege for being made a
standard to the whole of nature.

In reality, DEMEA, it may reasonably be expected, that the larger the
views are which we take of things, the better will they conduct us in our
conclusions concerning such extraordinary and such magnificent subjects.
In this little corner of the world alone, there are four principles,
reason, instinct, generation, vegetation, which are similar to each
other, and are the causes of similar effects. What a number of other
principles may we naturally suppose in the immense extent and variety of
the universe, could we travel from planet to planet, and from system to
system, in order to examine each part of this mighty fabric? Any one of
these four principles above mentioned, (and a hundred others which lie
open to our conjecture,) may afford us a theory by which to judge of the
origin of the world; and it is a palpable and egregious partiality to
confine our view entirely to that principle by which our own minds
operate. Were this principle more intelligible on that account, such a
partiality might be somewhat excusable: But reason, in its internal
fabric and structure, is really as little known to us as instinct or