The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

that falls to the ground, but shows it; not the slightest motion produced, the least whisper of the air, but tells it.

XIV. The frame and constitution of the world, the magnificence of it, the various phenomena and kinds of beings, the uniformity observed in the productions of things, the uses and ends for which they serve, etc., do all show that there is some Almighty designer, an infinite wisdom and power at the top of all these things: such marks there are of both.208 or, God is that Being, without whom such a frame or constitution of the world, such a magnificence in it, etc., could not be. In order to prove to anyone the grandness of this fabric of the world, one needs only to bid him consider the sun, with that insupportable glory and lustre that surrounds it; to demonstrate the vast distance, magnitude, and heat of it; to represent to him the chorus of planets moving periodically, by uniform laws, in their several orbits about it, affording a regular variety of aspects, guarded some of them by secondary planets, and, as it were, emulating the state of the sun, and probably all possessed by proper inhabitants; to remind him of those surprising visits the comets make us, the large trains, or uncommon splendor, which attends them, the far country they come from, and the curiosity and horror they excite not only among us, but in the inhabitants of other planets, who also may be up to see the entry and progress of these ministers of fate;209 to direct his eye and contemplation through those azure fields and vast regions above him, up to the fixed stars, that radiant numberless host of heaven, and to make him understand how unlikely a thing it is that they should be placed there only to adorn and bespangle a canopy over our heads (though that would be a great piece of magnificence too), and much less to supply the places of so many glowworms, by affording a feeble light to our earth, or even to all our fellow-planets; to convince him, that they are rather so many other suns, with their several regions and sets of planets about them; to show him, by the help of glasses, still more and more of these fixed lights, and to beget in him an apprehension of their unaccountable numbers, and of those immense spaces that lie retired beyond our utmost reach and even imagination⁠—I say, one needs but to do this, and explain to him such things as are now known almost to everybody, and by it to show that if the world be not infinite, it is infinito similis,210 and therefore sure a magnificent structure, and the work of an infinite Architect. But if we could take a view of all the particulars contained within that astonishing compass, which we have thus hastily run over, how would wonders multiply upon us? Every corner, every part of the world is as it were made up of other worlds. If we look upon this, our seat (I mean this earth), what scope is here for admiration? The great variety of mountains, hills, valleys, plains, rivers, seas, trees, plants! The many tribes of different animals with which it is flocked! The multifarious inventions and works of one of these; that is, of us men, etc. And yet when all these (heaven and earth) are surveyed as nicely as they can be by the help of our unassisted senses, and even of telescopical glasses, by the assistance of good microscopes in very small parts of matter as many new wonders211 may perhaps be discovered, as those already observed: new kingdoms of animals, new architecture and curiosity of work. So that, as before our senses and even conception fainted in those vast journeys we were obliged to take in considering the expanse of the universe, so here again they fail us in our researches into the principles and consistuent parts of it. Both the beginnings and the ends of things, the least and the greatest, all conspire to baffle us, and, which way ever we prosecute our inquiries, we still fall in with fresh subjects of amazement, and fresh reasons to believe that there are indefinitely still more, and more behind, that will forever escape our eagerest pursuits and deepest penetration.

This mighty building is not only thus grand, and the appearances stupendous in it, but the manner in which things are effected is commonly unintelligible, and their causes too profound for us. There are indeed many things in nature which we know, and some of which we seem to know the causes, but, alas! how few are these with respect to the whole sum? And the causes which we assign, what are they? Commonly such, as can only be expressed in general terms, while the bottoms of things remain unfathomable. Such as have been collected from experience, but could scarcely be known beforehand, by any arguments a priori, to be capable of rendering such effects; and yet till causes are known after that manner, they are not thoroughly understood. Such, as seem disproportionate and too little, and are so insufficient and unsatisfactory, that one cannot but be inclined to think that something immaterial and invisible must be immediately concerned. In short, we know many times that such a thing will have such an effect, or perhaps that such an effect is produced by such a cause, but the manner how we know not, or but grossly, and if such an hypothesis be true. It is impossible for us to come at the true principles of things, or to see into the economy of the finest part of nature and workings of the first springs. The causes that appear to us, are but effects of other causes; the vessels of which the bodies of plants and animals consist, are made up