Page:The System of Nature.djvu/91

 in whom he discovers neither the same construction, nor the same faculties: of which he knows neither the essence, the end to which they tend, the energies by which they act, nor the order that is necessary to them. The whole cannot have a distinct name, or end, because there is nothing out of itself, to which it can have a tendency. If it be in himself, that he arranges the idea of order, it is also in himself, that he draws up that of intelligence. He refuses to ascribe it to those beings, who do not act after his own manner: he accords it to all those whom he supposes to act like himself: the latter he calls intelligent agents: the former blind causes; that is to say, intelligent agents who act by chance: thus chance is an empty word without sense, but which is always opposed to that of intelligence, without attaching any determinate, or any certain idea.

Man, in fact, attributes to chance all those effects, of which the connection they have with their causes is not seen. Thus he uses the word chance, to cover his ignorance of those natural causes, which produce visible effects, by means which he cannot form an idea of; or that act by a mode of which he does not perceive the order; or whose system is not followed by actions conformable to his own. As soon as he sees, or believes he sees, the order of action, or the manner of motion, he attributes this order to an intelligence; which is nothing more than a quality borrowed from himself — from his own peculiar mode of action — from the manner in which he is himself affected.

Thus an intelligent being is one who thinks, who wills, and who acts, to compass an end. If so, he must have organs, an aim conformable to those of