one upon another, that they may cover the timber-work.  The divers floors serve to make different stories, in order to multiply lodgings within a small space.  The chimneys are contrived to light fire in winter without setting the house on fire, and to let out the smoke, lest it should offend those that warm themselves.  The apartments are distributed in such a manner that they be disengaged from one another; that a numerous family may lodge in the house, and the one not be obliged to pass through another’s room; and that the master’s apartment be the principal.  There are kitchens, offices, stables, and coach-houses.  The rooms are furnished with beds to lie in, chairs to sit on, and tables to write and eat on.  Sure, should one urge to that philosopher, this work must have been directed by some skilful architect; for everything in it is agreeable, pleasant, proportioned, and commodious; and besides, he must needs have had excellent artists under him.  “Not at all,” would such a philosopher answer; “you are ingenious in deceiving yourself.  It is true this house is pleasant, agreeable, proportioned, and commodious; but yet it made itself with all its proportions.  Chance put together all the stones in this excellent order; it raised the walls, jointed and laid the timber-work, cut open the casements, and placed the staircase:  do not believe any human hand had anything to do with it.  Men only made the best of this piece of work when they found it ready made.  They fancy it was made for them, because they observe things in it which they know how to improve to their own conveniency; but all they ascribe to the design and contrivance of an imaginary architect, is but the effect of their preposterous imaginations.  This so regular, and so well-contrived house, was made in just the same manner as a cave, and men finding it ready made to their hands made use of it, as they would in a storm, of a cave they should find under a rock in a desert.”

What thoughts could a man entertain of such a fantastic philosopher, if he should persist seriously to assert that such a house displays no art?  When we read the fabulous story of Amphion, who by a miraculous effect of harmony caused the stones to rise, and placed themselves, with order and symmetry, one on the top of another, in order to form the walls of Thebes, we laugh and sport with that poetical fiction:  but yet this very fiction is not so incredible as that which the free-thinking philosopher we contend with would dare to maintain.  We might, at least, imagine that harmony, which consists in a local motion of certain bodies, might (by some of those secret virtues, which we admire in nature, without being acquainted with them) shake and move the stones into a certain order and in a sort of cadence, which might occasion some regularity in the building.  I own this explanation both shocks and clashes with reason; but yet it is less extravagant than what I have supposed a philosopher should say.  What,