OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 233 
pearances to have been the effects of volcanoes or inunda¬ 
tions, namely, because they resemble the effects which fire 
and water produce before our eyes; and because we have 
never known these effects to result from any other opera¬ 
tion. And this resemblance may subsist in so many cir¬ 
cumstances, as not to leave us under the smallest doubt 
in forming our opinion. Men are not deceived by this 
reasoning: for whenever it happens, as it sometimes does 
happen, that the truth comes to be known by direct infor¬ 
mation, it turns out to be what was expected. In like 
manner, and upon the same foundation (which in truth is 
that of experience) we conclude that the works of nature 
proceeded from intelligence and design, because, in the 
properties of relation to a purpose, subserviency to a use, 
they resemble what intelligence and design are constantly 
producing, and what nothing except intelligence and de¬ 
sign ever produce at all. Of every argument, which 
would raise a question as to the safety of this reasoning, 
it may be observed, that if such argument be listened to, 
it leads to the inference, not only that the present order 
of nature is insufficient to prove the existence of an intelli¬ 
gent Creator, but that no imaginable order would be suf¬ 
ficient to prove it; that no contrivance, were it ever so me¬ 
chanical, ever so precise, ever so clear, ever so perfectly 
like those which we ourselves employ, would support this 
conclusion. A doctrine to which, I conceive, no sound 
mind can assent. 
The force, however, of the reasoning is sometimes sunk 
by our taking up with mere names. We have already no¬ 
ticed, # and we must here notice again, the misapplication 
of the term “ law,” and the mistake concerning the idea 
which that term expresses in physics, whenever such idea 
is made to take the place of power, and still more of an in¬ 
telligent power, and, as such, to be assigned for the cause 
of anything, or of any property of anything, that exists. 
This is what we are secretly apt to do, when we speak of or¬ 
ganized bodies (plants for instance, or animals,) owing their 
production, their form, their growth, their qualities, their 
beauty, their use, to any law or laws of nature; and when 
we are contented to sit down with that answer to our inqui¬ 
ries concerning them. I say once more, that it is a per¬ 
version of language to assign any law as the efficient oper¬ 
ative cause of anything. A law presupposes an agent, for 
it is only the mode according to which an agent proceeds; 
* Chap. I. sec. vii. 
U* 
