41 



chiefly rested. I would merely add, what an objector might 

 in this place urge, that we can have no experience of negative 

 existence ; but at the same time we are not to supply this deficiency 

 of experience by inference, unless the analogy upon which it is 

 founded is at least perfect in essential points. This matter has 

 been before discussed in our examination of the grounds and 

 nature of belief. 



15. Intellect is no designing principle until it is furnished 

 with ideas, the capacity for designing is produced in the usual way 

 of cause and effect: the intellect which we bring into the world 

 with us is a mere pre-disposition : it is constituted a designing 

 principle by the operation of those causes which fill it with ideas, 

 and by familiarity with which it becomes instructed in the relations 

 of causes with effects (the production of these latter being the 

 general purpose of design). The very capacity for designing, in 

 every example we have of it, is a mere effect: it is itself the result 

 of a process of causation. And what is its force? Simply that 

 of becoming in its turn a cause, and of having the same relation 

 with the consequences which result from it, as any other prevail- 

 ing cause might have with the circle of effects in which it is liable 

 to be interested. What then must we conclude from this fact in 

 conjunction with a principle before expressed, but that there are 

 causes which precede and constitute the designing capacity itself, 

 rather than that the designing capacity must precede every act of 

 formation 1 



16. Will it be said this is true in regard to ourselves, but 

 those causes which we suppose so perfectly free from any design- 

 ing principle, and which excite our ideas, are themselves governed 

 and directed by an universal principle of intelligence? I ask for 

 the proof, or even for evidence of a much weaker degree; and so 

 fond am I of the notion of such a presence that I will almost force 

 mvself to believe it upon weak grounds: of course the proofs I 

 require are those of natural evidence. It must be replied as 

 before stated, that as we can do nothing that is worth the doing 

 without designing for it, so nothing worth doing can be done 

 which is not designed. To this it must be answered, that such an 

 assertion is not consistent with our sensible testimonies, which 

 amount to this, that causes (viz. the intellectual radicle and those 

 objects which instruct it) produce in man a designing capacity: 

 that these causes operate and produce this effect without being 

 themselves actuated by design, and that then the designing capacity 

 so produced operates in its turn, and produces effects which are 

 conformable with their causes. Are we to conclude that design 

 actuates every process of causation, because we perceive that it is 

 concerned in some? 



17. If this question should be answered in the affirmative it 

 must needs be an arbitrary decision, a mere ipsedixit; for it is 

 contrary to the rules of reasoning which we acknowledge and 

 observe in similar cases. We might as reasonably tack up a 



H 



