OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 
235 
rest, I should see contrivance; i>ut if I saw it grinding, I 
should be assured that a hand was at the windlass, though 
in another room. It is the same in nature. In the works 
of nature we trace mechanism; and this alone proves 
contrivance: but living, active, moving, productive nature, 
proves also the exertion of a power at the centre; for, 
wherever the power resides may be denominated the centre. 
The intervention and disposition of what are called 
“ second causes fall under the same observation. 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 mechanical, what 
is here said of mechanism strictly applies to it. But it 
would be always mechanism (natural chemistry, for in¬ 
stance, would be mechanism) if our senses were acute 
enough to descry it. Neither mechanism, therefore, in 
the works of nature, nor the intervention of what are call¬ 
ed second causes, (for I think that they are the same 
thing,) excuses the necessity of an agent distinct from both. 
If, in tracing these causes, it be said, that we find cer¬ 
tain general properties of matter which have nothing in 
them that bespeaks intelligence, I answer, that still the 
managing of these properties, the pointing and directing 
them to the uses which we see made of them, demands in¬ 
telligence in the highest degree. For example: suppose 
animal secretions to be elective attraction, 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 fix¬ 
ing upon right substances, and disposing them in right 
places, must be an act of intelligence. What mischief 
would follow, were there a single transposition of the se¬ 
cretory organs; a single mistake in arranging the glands 
which compose them! 
There may be many second causes, and many courses 
of second causes, one behind another, between what we 
observe of nature and the Deity; but there must be in¬ 
telligence somewhere; there must be more in nature than 
what we see; and, amongst the things unseen, there must 
be an intelligent, designing author. The philosopher be¬ 
holds with astonishment the production of things around 
him. Unconscious particles of matter take their stations, 
and severally range themselves in an order, so as to become 
collectively plants or animals, i. e. organized bodies, with 
