How, therefore, shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being whom you suppose the Author of Nature, or, according to your system of Anthropomorphism, the ideal world, into which you trace the material?  Have we not the same reason to trace that ideal world into another ideal world, or new intelligent principle?  But if we stop, and go no further; why go so far? why not stop at the material world?  How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum?  And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression?  Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant.  It was never more applicable than to the present subject.  If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end.  It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.  By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much the better.  When you go one step beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humour which it is impossible ever to satisfy.

To say, that the different ideas which compose the reason of the Supreme Being, fall into order of themselves, and by their own nature, is really to talk without any precise meaning.  If it has a meaning, I would fain know, why it is not as good sense to say, that the parts of the material world fall into order of themselves and by their own nature.  Can the one opinion be intelligible, while the other is not so?

We have, indeed, experience of ideas which fall into order of themselves, and without any known cause.  But, I am sure, we have a much larger experience of matter which does the same; as, in all instances of generation and vegetation, where the accurate analysis of the cause exceeds all human comprehension.  We have also experience of particular systems of thought and of matter which have no order; of the first in madness, of the second in corruption.  Why, then, should we think, that order is more essential to one than the other?  And if it requires a cause in both, what do we gain by your system, in tracing the universe of objects into a similar universe of ideas?  The first step which we make leads us on for ever.  It were, therefore, wise in us to limit all our inquiries to the present world, without looking further.  No satisfaction can ever be attained by these speculations, which so far exceed the narrow bounds of human understanding.

It was usual with the PERIPATETICS, you know, cleanthes, when the cause of any phenomenon was demanded, to have recourse to their faculties or occult qualities; and to say, for instance, that bread nourished by its nutritive faculty, and senna purged by its purgative.  But it has been discovered, that this subterfuge was nothing but the disguise of ignorance; and that these philosophers, though less ingenuous, really said the