Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/233

 my Favour, by embracing those Principles, to which, you know, I have always express'd a particular Attachment. But allowing you to make Experience (as indeed I think you ought) the only Standard of your Judgment concerning this, and all other Questions of Fact; I doubt not but it may be possible, from the very same Experience you appeal to, to refute this Reasoning, which you have put into the Mouth of Epicurus. If you saw, for Instance, a half-finish'd Building, surrounded with Heaps of Bricks and Stones and Mortar, and all the Instruments of Masonry; could you not infer from the Effect, that it was a Work of Design and Contrivance? And could you not return again, from this infer'd Cause, to infer new Additions to the Effect, and conclude, that the Building would soon be finish'd, and receive all the farther Improvements, which Art could bestow upon it? If you saw, upon the Sea-shore, the Print of one human Foot, you would conclude, that a Man had pass'd that Way, and that he had also left the Traces of the other Foot, tho' effac'd by the rolling of the Sands or Inundation of the Waters. Why then do you refuse to admit the same Method of Reasoning with regard to the Order of Nature? Consider the World and the present Life only as an imperfect Building, from which you can infer a superior Intelligence; and arguing from that superior Intelligence, which can leave nothing imperfect; why may you not infer a more fi-