43 



cede the proposition it indicates, then those things (or their pro- 

 totypes) which it seems were made by design, are antecedent to 

 design, and so far from being the effects are the causes of design. 



21. And now to recur to ou; principle, which we state to be 

 this, as nothing can exist without a cause; as this principle is 

 founded upon every known instance of origination; so one cause 

 cannot produce it, for one cause must remain as such, and cannot 

 be different from itself: it is therefore necessary that the effect 

 (which is always different from a single cause) should comprise in 

 itself causes, different individually from such effect, but the same 

 in the aggregate. Hence it follows that the principle of intelli- 

 gence, this same designing principle, must be made by causes, or 

 is their effect; and as the causes individually must be different 

 from the effect, so there were agents which preceded design, and 

 without the guidance of design formed the designing principle 

 itself: and yet it is said that nothing good, excellent, or regular, 

 can be produced without design; while it must be admitted, 

 agreeably with natural evidence, that design itself must have been 

 produced without it. 



22. According then to the preceding principles, which are 

 merely exhibited as a sketch of the indications of nature, the fol- 

 lowing is the state of the question with respect to the influence 

 of a pervading intellect, or universal mind: 



1. This visible world cannot have been produced, de novo, 

 not having existed in any form before, by mere intellectual influ- 

 ence; since no cause can supply that which it does not possess, 

 or be either more or less than itself, or contribute any other influ- 

 ence than that which is comprised in its own existence. 



2. Such universal mind itself must have been produced by its 

 causes; and these latter, determining all effects*, determining all 

 operations (since nothing can take place but by them), must govern 

 such universal mind, making it that which it is, and making it in 

 its turn concur in the general scheme of causation. 



3. That such an intellectual principle might have been formed 

 in the way mentioned; that it may pervade all nature, direct] the 

 operation of other causes, mingle with them for final purposes of 

 its own; and that it may arrange and direct every part for the 

 good of the whole (which is as much as we can imagine of the ex- 

 cellence of such a nature); I say, all this may be true, for any thing 

 urged to the contrary in the preceding sketches: but it behoves 

 one who worships truth (or, to speak more philosophically, who is 

 desirous of obtaining and resting upon firm convictions), and who 

 knows how liable human nature is to be deceived by false appear- 

 ances, to examine this matter rigidly as a question, before he yields 

 to it an implicit belief. 



23. It has been asked, first, if there were no such universal 

 mind, how came we to have the notion of such a thing? It has 

 been further inquired, secondly, how the notion of an intellectual 

 and moral presence came to be so prevailing, that there is perhaps 



