jecture or inference at all concerning its cause. If exa perience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature; both the effect and caufe muft bear a fimilarity and resemblance to other effects and caufes, which we know, and which we have found, in many inftances, to be conjoined with each other. I leave it to your own reflection to pursue the confequences of this principle. I shall just observe, that as the antagonifts of EPICURUS always suppose the universe, an effect quite fingular and unparalleled, to be the proof of a Deity, a cause no less fingular and unparalleled; your reasonings, upon that fuppofition, feem, at least, to merit our attention. There is, I own, fome difficulty how we can ever return from the cause to the effect, and, reasoning from our ideas of the former, infer any alteration on the latter, or any addition to it.

SECTION

XII.

OF THE ACADEMICAL OR SCEPTICAL PHI

LOSOPHY.

TH

PART I.

HERE is not a greater number of philosophical reafonings, difplayed upon any fubject, than thofe, which prove the existence of a Deity, and refute the fallacies of Atheifts; and yet the most religious philofophers ftill difpute whether any man can be fo blinded as to be a fpeculative atheist. How fhall we reconcile these contradictions? The knights-errant, who wandered about to clear the world of dragons and giants, never entertained the least doubt with regard to the existence of these monsters.

The Sceptic is another enemy of religion, who naturally provokes the indignation of all divines and graver philofophers; though it is certain, that no man ever met with any fuch abfurd creature, or converfed with a man, who had no opinion or principle concerning any fubject, either of action or fpeculation. This begets a very natural queftion; What is meant by a fceptic? And how far it is poffible to push these philofophical principles of doubt and uncertainty?

There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philofophy, which is much inculcated by DES CAR

TES

TES and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgment. It recommends an univerfal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whofe veracity, say they, we must affure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from fome original principle, which cannot poffibly be fallacious or deceitful. But neither is there. any fuch original principle, which has a prerogative above others, that are self-evident and convincing: Or if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by the use of those very faculties, of which we are supposed to be already diffident? The CARTESIAN doubt, therefore, were it ever poffible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reafoning could ever bring us to a state of affurance and conviction upon any subject.

It muft, however, be confeffed, that this fpecies of fcepticism, when more moderate, may be understood in a very reasonable sense, and is a neceffary preparative to the study of philofophy, by preferving a proper impartiality in our judgments, and weaning our mind from all those prejudices, which we may have imbibed from education or rafh opinion. To begin with clear and felf-evident principles, to advance by timorous and fure fteps, to review frequently our conclufions, and examine accurately all their confequences; though by these means we shall make both a flow and a short progress in our fyftems; are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations.

There is another fpecies of fcepticism, confequent to fcience and inquiry, when men are supposed to have discovered, either the abfolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties, or their unfitness to reach any fixed determi

nation in all those curious fubjects of speculation, about which they are commonly employed. Even our very fenfes are brought into dispute, by a certain fpecies of philofophers; and the maxims of common life are subjected to the same doubt as the most profound principles or conclusions of metaphyfics and theology. As these paradoxical tenets (if they may be called tenets) are to be met with in some philosophers, and the refutation of them in feveral, they naturally excite our curiofity, and make us inquire into the arguments, on which they may be founded.

I need not infift upon the more trite topics, employed by the fceptics in all ages, against the evidence of sense; fuch as thofe which are derived from the imperfection and fallaciousness of our organs, on numberless occafions; the crooked appearance of an oar in water; the various afpects of objects, according to their different distances; the double images which arife from the preffing one eye; with many other appearances of a like nature. Thefe fceptical topics, indeed, are only fufficient to prove, that the fenfes alone are not implicitly to be depended on; but that we must correct their evidence by reason, and by confiderations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the difpofition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falfehood. There are other more profound arguments against the fenfes, which admit not of so easy a solution.

It seems evident, that men are carried by a natural inftinct or prepoffeffion, to repofe faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always fuppofe an external univerfe, which depends not on our perception, but would

exist, though we and every fenfible creature were abfent or annihilated. Even the animal creation are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, defigns, and actions.

It seems alfo evident, that, when men follow this blind and powerful inftinct of nature, they always fuppofe the very images, prefented by the fenfes, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but reprefentations of the other. This very table, which we fee white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be fomething external to our mind, which perceives it. Our presence bestows not being on it: Our abfence does not annihilate it. It preferves its existence uniform and entire, independent of the fituation of intelligent beings, who perceive or contemplate it.

But this univerfal and primary opinion of all men is foon destroyed by the flightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we fee, feems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: But the real table, which exifts independent of us, fuffers no alteration: It was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was prefent to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reafon; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we confider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting copies or reprefentations of other exiftences, which remain uniform and independent.

Sa