What I chiefly scruple in this subject, said Philo, is not so much that all religious arguments are by cleanthes reduced to experience, as that they appear not to be even the most certain and irrefragable of that inferior kind.  That a stone will fall, that fire will burn, that the earth has solidity, we have observed a thousand and a thousand times; and when any new instance of this nature is presented, we draw without hesitation the accustomed inference.  The exact similarity of the cases gives us a perfect assurance of a similar event; and a stronger evidence is never desired nor sought after.  But wherever you depart, in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty.  After having experienced the circulation of the blood in human creatures, we make no doubt that it takes place in TITIUS and MAEVIUS.  But from its circulation in frogs and fishes, it is only a presumption, though a strong one, from analogy, that it takes place in men and other animals.  The analogical reasoning is much weaker, when we infer the circulation of the sap in vegetables from our experience that the blood circulates in animals; and those, who hastily followed that imperfect analogy, are found, by more accurate experiments, to have been mistaken.

If we see a house, cleanthes, we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder; because this is precisely that species of effect which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause.  But surely you will not affirm, that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house, that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect.  The dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend to is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause; and how that pretension will be received in the world, I leave you to consider.

It would surely be very ill received, replied cleanthes; and I should be deservedly blamed and detested, did I allow, that the proofs of a Deity amounted to no more than a guess or conjecture.  But is the whole adjustment of means to ends in a house and in the universe so slight a resemblance?  The economy of final causes?  The order, proportion, and arrangement of every part?  Steps of a stair are plainly contrived, that human legs may use them in mounting; and this inference is certain and infallible.  Human legs are also contrived for walking and mounting; and this inference, I allow, is not altogether so certain, because of the dissimilarity which you remark; but does it, therefore, deserve the name only of presumption or conjecture?

Good God! cried DEMEA, interrupting him, where are we?  Zealous defenders of religion allow, that the proofs of a Deity fall short of perfect evidence!  And you, Philo, on whose assistance I depended in proving the adorable mysteriousness of the Divine Nature, do you assent to all these extravagant opinions of cleanthes?  For what other name can I give them? or, why spare my censure, when such principles are advanced, supported by such an authority, before so young a man as PAMPHILUS?