NATURAL THEOLOGY. 59 



The intervention and disposition of what are 

 called ^'secojtd causes^' fall under the same obser- 

 vation. This disposition is or is not mechanism, 

 according as we can or cannot trace it by our 

 senses and means of examination. That is all the 

 difference there is ; and it is a difference which 

 respects our faculties, not the things themselves. 

 Now where the order of second causes is mecha- 

 nical, what is here said of mechanism strictly 

 applies to it. But it would be always mechanism 

 (natural chemistry, for instance, would be mecha- 

 nism,) if our senses were acute enough to descry 

 it. Neither mechanism, therefore, in the works of 

 nature, nor the intervention of what are called 

 second causes (for I think that they are the same 

 thing,) excuses the necessity of an agent distinc 

 from both. 



If, in tracing these causes, it be said that we find 

 certain general properties of matter which have 

 nothing in them that bespeaks intelligence, I an- 

 swer that still the managing of these properties, 

 ih& pointing and directing them to the uses which 

 we see made of them, demands intelligence in the 

 highest degree. For example : suppose animal 

 secretions to be elective attractions, and that such 

 and such attractions universally belong to such and 

 such substances — in all which there is no intellect 

 concerned ; still the choice and collocation of 

 these substances, the fixing upon right substances, 

 and disposing them in right places, must be an act 

 of intelligence. What mischief would follow 



