In a word, cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design:  but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis.  This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance:  it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors:  it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.  You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES’s suppositions, not mine.  From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place.  And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.

These suppositions I absolutely disown, cried cleanthes:  they strike me, however, with no horror, especially when proposed in that rambling way in which they drop from you.  On the contrary, they give me pleasure, when I see, that, by the utmost indulgence of your imagination, you never get rid of the hypothesis of design in the universe, but are obliged at every turn to have recourse to it.  To this concession I adhere steadily; and this I regard as a sufficient foundation for religion.

PART 6

It must be a slight fabric, indeed, said DEMEA, which can be erected on so tottering a foundation.  While we are uncertain whether there is one deity or many; whether the deity or deities, to whom we owe our existence, be perfect or imperfect, subordinate or supreme, dead or alive, what trust or confidence can we repose in them?  What devotion or worship address to them?  What veneration or obedience pay them?  To all the purposes of life the theory of religion becomes altogether useless:  and even with regard to speculative consequences, its uncertainty, according to you, must render it totally precarious and unsatisfactory.

To render it still more unsatisfactory, said Philo, there occurs to me another hypothesis, which must acquire an air of probability from the method of reasoning so much insisted on by cleanthes.  That like effects arise from like causes:  this principle he supposes the foundation of all religion.  But there is another principle of the same kind, no less certain, and derived from the same source of experience; that where several known circumstances are observed to be similar, the unknown will also be found similar.  Thus, if we see the limbs of a human body, we conclude that it is also attended with a human head, though hid from us.  Thus, if we see, through a chink in a wall, a small part of the sun, we conclude, that, were the wall removed, we should see the whole body.  In short, this method of reasoning is so obvious and familiar, that no scruple can ever be made with regard to its solidity.