furnish a key which solves the difficulty? And instead of admiring the
order of natural beings, may it not happen, that, could we penetrate into
the intimate nature of bodies, we should clearly see why it was
absolutely impossible they could ever admit of any other disposition? So
dangerous is it to introduce this idea of necessity into the present
question! and so naturally does it afford an inference directly opposite
to the religious hypothesis!

But dropping all these abstractions, continued PHILO, and confining
ourselves to more familiar topics, I shall venture to add an observation,
that the argument a priori has seldom been found very convincing, except
to people of a metaphysical head, who have accustomed themselves to
abstract reasoning, and who, finding from mathematics, that the
understanding frequently leads to truth through obscurity, and, contrary
to first appearances, have transferred the same habit of thinking to
subjects where it ought not to have place. Other people, even of good
sense and the best inclined to religion, feel always some deficiency in
such arguments, though they are not perhaps able to explain distinctly
where it lies; a certain proof that men ever did, and ever will derive
their religion from other sources than from this species of reasoning.




PART 10



It is my opinion, I own, replied DEMEA, that each man feels, in a manner,
the truth of religion within his own breast, and, from a consciousness of