ftincts and propenficies. Is it not experience, which renders a dog apprehenfive of pain, when you menace him, or lift up the whip to beat him? Is it not even experience, which makes him answer to his name, and infer, from fuch an arbitrary sound, that you mean him rather than any of his fellows, and intend to call him, when you pronounce it in a certain manner, and with a certain tone and accent?

In all these cafes, we may obferve, that the animal infers fome fact beyond what immediately frikes his fenses; and that this inference is altogether founded on past experience, while the creature expects from the present object the fame confequences, which it has always found in its obfervation to refult from fimilar objects.

Secondly, It is impoffible, that this inference of the animal can be founded on any process of argument or reafoning, by which he concludes, that like events must follow like objects, and that the course of nature will always be regular in its operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this nature, they surely lie too abftrufe for the obfervation of fuch imperfect understandings; fince it may well employ the utmost care and attention of a philofophic genius to discover and observe them. Animals, therefore, are not guided in these inferences by reafoning: Neither are children: Neither are the generality of mankind, in their ordinary actions and conclufions: Neither are philofophers themselves, who, in all the active parts of life, are, in the main, the fame with the vulgar, and are governed by the same maxims. Nature must have provided fome other principle, of more ready, and more general use and application; nor can an operation of fuch immenfe confequence

in life, as that of inferring effects from caufes, be trusted to the uncertain procefs of reafoning and argumentation. Were this doubtful with regard to men, it seems to admit of no queftion with regard to the brute creation; and the conclufion being once firmly established in the one, we have a strong prefumption, from all the rules of analogy, that it ought to be univerfally admitted, without any exception or reserve. It is cuftom alone, which engages animals, from every object, that strikes their fenfes, to infer its ufual attendant, and carries their imagination, from the appearance of the one, to conceive the other, in that particular manner, which we denominate belief. No other explication can be given of this operation, in all the higher, as well as lower claffes of fenfitive beings, which fall under our notice and obfervation *.

But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it, which they derive from the original hand of nature; which much exceed the fhare of capacity they poffefs on ordinary occafions; and in which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice and experience. These we denominate INSTINCTS, and are fo apt to admire, as fomething very extraordinary, and inexplicable by all the difquifitions of human understanding. But our wonder will, perhaps, cease or diminish; when we confider, that the experimental reasoning itself, which we poffefs in common with beafts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts in us unknown to ourselves; and in its chief operations, is not directed

* See NOTE [H.]

by

by any fuch relations or comparisons of ideas, as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that, which teaches a bird, with fuch exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery.

VOL. II.

SECTION X.

OF MIRACLES.

THE

PART I.

HERE is, in Dr TILLOTSON's writings, an argument against the real prefence, which is as concife, and elegant, and ftrong as any argument can poffibly be fuppofed against a doctrine, fo little worthy of a ferious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, fays that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the fcrip ture or of tradition, is founded merely in the teftimony of the apoftles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine miffion. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Chriftian religion is lefs than the evidence for the truth of our fenses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in paffing from them to their disciples; nor can any one reft fuch confidence in their teftimony, as in the immediate object of his fenfes. But a weaker evidence can never deftroy a ftronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our affent to it. It contradicts fense, though both the fcripture and tradition, on which it is fuppofed to be built, carry not fuch evidence with them as sense; when