"Not at all," would such a philosopher
answer; "you are ingenious in deceiving yourself. It is true this
house is pleasant, agreeable, proportioned, and commodious; but yet
it made itself with all its proportions. Chance put together all
the stones in this excellent order; it raised the walls, jointed and
laid the timber-work, cut open the casements, and placed the
staircase: do not believe any human hand had anything to do with
it. Men only made the best of this piece of work when they found it
ready made. They fancy it was made for them, because they observe
things in it which they know how to improve to their own
conveniency; but all they ascribe to the design and contrivance of
an imaginary architect, is but the effect of their preposterous
imaginations. This so regular, and so well-contrived house, was
made in just the same manner as a cave, and men finding it ready
made to their hands made use of it, as they would in a storm, of a
cave they should find under a rock in a desert."
What thoughts could a man entertain of such a fantastic philosopher,
if he should persist seriously to assert that such a house displays
no art? When we read the fabulous story of Amphion, who by a
miraculous effect of harmony caused the stones to rise, and placed
themselves, with order and symmetry, one on the top of another, in
order to form the walls of Thebes, we laugh and sport with that
poetical fiction: but yet this very fiction is not so incredible as
that which the free-thinking philosopher we contend with would dare
to maintain.
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