It is in vain, therefore, to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals or vegetables, and their curious adjustment to each other.  I would fain know, how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted?  Do we not find, that it immediately perishes whenever this adjustment ceases, and that its matter corrupting tries some new form?  It happens indeed, that the parts of the world are so well adjusted, that some regular form immediately lays claim to this corrupted matter:  and if it were not so, could the world subsist?  Must it not dissolve as well as the animal, and pass through new positions and situations, till in great, but finite succession, it falls at last into the present or some such order?

It is well, replied cleanthes, you told us, that this hypothesis was suggested on a sudden, in the course of the argument.  Had you had leisure to examine it, you would soon have perceived the insuperable objections to which it is exposed.  No form, you say, can subsist, unless it possess those powers and organs requisite for its subsistence:  some new order or economy must be tried, and so on, without intermission; till at last some order, which can support and maintain itself, is fallen upon.  But according to this hypothesis, whence arise the many conveniences and advantages which men and all animals possess?  Two eyes, two ears, are not absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the species.  Human race might have been propagated and preserved, without horses, dogs, cows, sheep, and those innumerable fruits and products which serve to our satisfaction and enjoyment.  If no camels had been created for the use of man in the sandy deserts of Africa and Arabia, would the world have been dissolved?  If no lodestone had been framed to give that wonderful and useful direction to the needle, would human society and the human kind have been immediately extinguished?  Though the maxims of Nature be in general very frugal, yet instances of this kind are far from being rare; and any one of them is a sufficient proof of design, and of a benevolent design, which gave rise to the order and arrangement of the universe.

At least, you may safely infer, said Philo, that the foregoing hypothesis is so far incomplete and imperfect, which I shall not scruple to allow.  But can we ever reasonably expect greater success in any attempts of this nature?  Or can we ever hope to erect a system of cosmogony, that will be liable to no exceptions, and will contain no circumstance repugnant to our limited and imperfect experience of the analogy of Nature?  Your theory itself cannot surely pretend to any such advantage, even though you have run into Anthropomorphism, the better to preserve a conformity to common experience.  Let us once more put it to trial.  In all instances which we have ever seen, ideas are copied from real objects, and are ectypal, not archetypal, to express myself in learned terms:  You reverse this order, and