The Religion of Nature Delineated

produced with design, not by chance. If it acts necessarily, the event must necessarily be, and therefore it is not by accident. For that which is by accident or chance only, might not have been; or, it is an accident only that it is. There can be therefore no such cause as chance. And to omit a great deal that might yet be said, matter is indefinitely divisible, and the first particles (or atoms) of which it consists must be small beyond all our apprehension; and the chances that must all hit to produce one individual of any species of material beings (if only chance was concerned), must consequently be indefinitely many; and if space be also indefinitely extended, and the number of those individuals (not to say of the species themselves) which lie dispersed in it indefinite, the chances required to the production of them all, or of the universe, will be the rectangle of one indefinite quantity drawn into another. We may well call them infinite. And then, to say that anything cannot happen unless infinite chances coincide, is the same as to say there are infinite chances against the happening of it, or odds that it will not happen; and this, again, is the same as to say it is impossible to happen, since if there be a possibility that it may happen, the hazard is not infinite. The world therefore cannot be the child of chance.214 He must be little acquainted with the works of nature, who is not sensible how delicate and fine they are; and the finer they are, the grosser were those of Epicurus.215

If it should be objected that many things seem to be useless, many births are monstrous, or the like, such answers as these may be made: The uses of some things are known to some men, and not to others; the uses of some are known now, that were not known to anybody formerly; the uses of many may be discovered hereafter; and those of some other things may forever remain unknown to all men, and yet be in nature, as much as those discovered were before their discovery, or are now in respect of them who know them not. Things have not, therefore, no uses, because they are concealed from us. Nor is nature irregular, or without method, because there are some seeming deviations from the common rule. These are generally the effects of that influence which free agents and various circumstances have upon natural productions, which may be deformed or hurt by external impressions, heterogeneous matter introduced, or disagreeable and unnatural motions excited; and if the case could be truly put, it would no doubt appear that nature proceeds as regularly (or the laws of nature have as regular an effect), when a monster is produced, as when the usual issue in common cases. Under these circumstances the monster is the genuine issue: that is, in the same circumstances there would always be the same kind of production. And, therefore, if things are now and then misshaped, this infers no unsteadiness or mistake in nature. Besides, the magnificence of the world admits of some perturbations; not to say, requires some variety. The question is: Could all those things, which we do know to have uses and ends, and to the production of which such wonderful contrivance and the combinations of so many things are required, be produced, and method and regularity be preserved so far as it is, if nothing but blind chance presided over all? Are not the innumerable instances of things which are undeniably made with reference to certain ends, and of those which are propagated and repeated by the same constant methods, enough to convince us that there are ends proposed, and rules observed, even where we do not see them? And, lastly, if we should descend to particulars, what are those seemingly useless or monstrous productions in respect of the rest, that plainly declare the ends for which they were intended, and that come into the world by the usual ways, with the usual perfection of their several kinds? If the comparison could be made, I verily believe these would be found to be almost infinituple of the other, which ought therefore to be reputed as nothing.

They, who content themselves with words, may ascribe the formation of the world to “fate” or “nature,” as well as to chance, or better. And yet fate, in the first place, is nothing but a series of events, considered as necessarily following in some certain order, or of which it has always been true that they would be in their determinate times and places. It is called indeed a series of causes,216 but then they are such causes as are also effects⁠—all of them, if there is no First cause⁠—and may be taken for such. So that in this description is nothing like such a cause as is capable of giving this form to the world. A series of events is the same with events happening seriatim: which words declare nothing concerning the cause of that concatenation of events, or why it is. Time, place, manner, necessity are but circumstances of things that come to pass, not causes of their existence, or of their being as they are. On the contrary, some external and superior cause must be supposed to put the series in motion, to project the order, to connect the causes and effects, and to impose the necessity.217

Then for “nature,”

1. If it be used for the intrinsic manner of existing⁠—that constitution, make, or disposition, with which anything is produced or born, and from which result those properties, powers, inclinations, passions, qualities, and manners, which are called natural (and sometimes “nature”), in opposition to such as are acquired, adventitious, or forced (which use is common)⁠—then to say that nature formed anything, or gave it its manner of existence, is to say that it formed