Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion | Page 7

life, is constrained to have more or less of this philosophy; that

from our earliest infancy we make continual advances in forming more general principles
of conduct and reasoning; that the larger experience we acquire, and the stronger reason
we are endued with, we always render our principles the more general and
comprehensive; and that what we call philosophy is nothing but a more regular and
methodical operation of the same kind. To philosophise on such subjects, is nothing
essentially different from reasoning on common life; and we may only expect greater
stability, if not greater truth, from our philosophy, on account of its exacter and more
scrupulous method of proceeding.
But when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies:
when we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state
of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and properties of
spirits; the powers and operations of one universal Spirit existing without beginning and
without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We
must be far removed from the smallest tendency to scepticism not to be apprehensive,
that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculties. So long as we confine our
speculations to trade, or morals, or politics, or criticism, we make appeals, every moment,
to common sense and experience, which strengthen our philosophical conclusions, and
remove, at least in part, the suspicion which we so justly entertain with regard to every
reasoning that is very subtle and refined. But, in theological reasonings, we have not this
advantage; while, at the same time, we are employed upon objects, which, we must be
sensible, are too large for our grasp, and of all others, require most to be familiarised to
our apprehension. We are like foreigners in a strange country, to whom every thing must
seem suspicious, and who are in danger every moment of transgressing against the laws
and customs of the people with whom they live and converse. We know not how far we
ought to trust our vulgar methods of reasoning in such a subject; since, even in common
life, and in that province which is peculiarly appropriated to them, we cannot account for
them, and are entirely guided by a kind of instinct or necessity in employing them.
All sceptics pretend, that, if reason be considered in an abstract view, it furnishes
invincible arguments against itself; and that we could never retain any conviction or
assurance, on any subject, were not the sceptical reasonings so refined and subtle, that
they are not able to counterpoise the more solid and more natural arguments derived from
the senses and experience. But it is evident, whenever our arguments lose this advantage,
and run wide of common life, that the most refined scepticism comes to be upon a footing
with them, and is able to oppose and counterbalance them. The one has no more weight
than the other. The mind must remain in suspense between them; and it is that very
suspense or balance, which is the triumph of scepticism.
But I observe, says CLEANTHES, with regard to you, PHILO, and all speculative
sceptics, that your doctrine and practice are as much at variance in the most abstruse
points of theory as in the conduct of common life. Wherever evidence discovers itself,
you adhere to it, notwithstanding your pretended scepticism; and I can observe, too, some
of your sect to be as decisive as those who make greater professions of certainty and
assurance. In reality, would not a man be ridiculous, who pretended to reject NEWTON's
explication of the wonderful phenomenon of the rainbow, because that explication gives
a minute anatomy of the rays of light; a subject, forsooth, too refined for human
comprehension? And what would you say to one, who, having nothing particular to
object to the arguments of COPERNICUS and GALILEO for the motion of the earth,

should withhold his assent, on that general principle, that these subjects were too
magnificent and remote to be explained by the narrow and fallacious reason of mankind?
There is indeed a kind of brutish and ignorant scepticism, as you well observed, which
gives the vulgar a general prejudice against what they do not easily understand, and
makes them reject every principle which requires elaborate reasoning to prove and
establish it. This species of scepticism is fatal to knowledge, not to religion; since we find,
that those who make greatest profession of it, give often their assent, not only to the great
truths of Theism and natural theology, but even to the most absurd tenets which a
traditional superstition has recommended to them. They firmly believe in witches, though
they will not believe nor attend to the most simple proposition of Euclid. But the refined
and