I was from the beginning scandalised, I must own, with this resemblance, which is asserted, between the Deity and human creatures; and must conceive it to imply such a degradation of the Supreme Being as no sound Theist could endure.  With your assistance, therefore, DEMEA, I shall endeavour to defend what you justly call the adorable mysteriousness of the Divine Nature, and shall refute this reasoning of cleanthes, provided he allows that I have made a fair representation of it.

When cleanthes had assented, Philo, after a short pause, proceeded in the following manner.

That all inferences, cleanthes, concerning fact, are founded on experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes; I shall not at present much dispute with you.  But observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases.  Unless the cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon.  Every alteration of circumstances occasions a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new experiments to prove certainly, that the new circumstances are of no moment or importance.  A change in bulk, situation, arrangement, age, disposition of the air, or surrounding bodies; any of these particulars may be attended with the most unexpected consequences:  And unless the objects be quite familiar to us, it is the highest temerity to expect with assurance, after any of these changes, an event similar to that which before fell under our observation.  The slow and deliberate steps of philosophers here, if any where, are distinguished from the precipitate march of the vulgar, who, hurried on by the smallest similitude, are incapable of all discernment or consideration.

But can you think, cleanthes, that your usual phlegm and philosophy have been preserved in so wide a step as you have taken, when you compared to the universe houses, ships, furniture, machines, and, from their similarity in some circumstances, inferred a similarity in their causes?  Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other animals, is no more than one of the springs and principles of the universe, as well as heat or cold, attraction or repulsion, and a hundred others, which fall under daily observation.  It is an active cause, by which some particular parts of nature, we find, produce alterations on other parts.  But can a conclusion, with any propriety, be transferred from parts to the whole?  Does not the great disproportion bar all comparison and inference?  From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn any thing concerning the generation of a man?  Would the manner of a leaf’s blowing, even though perfectly known, afford us any instruction concerning the vegetation of a tree?