: in short, he gave him more
familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's _Analogy_: 'Why, Sir,
the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our
profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human
life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the case
of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in opinion. I am
not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something.' The
conversation then turned on Atheism; on that horrible book, _Systeme de
la Nature_[130]; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity, without
design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. 'If it were so, why has it
ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around us now? Why, at least,
does it not keep pace, in some measure, with the progress of time? If
it stops because there is now no need of it, then it is plain there is,
and ever has been, an all powerful intelligence. But stay! (said he,
with one of his satyrick laughs[131].) Ha! ha! ha! I shall suppose
Scotchmen made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice.'

At dinner this day, we had Sir Alexander Dick, whose amiable character,
and ingenious and cultivated mind, are so generally known; (he was then
on the verge of seventy, and is now (1785) eighty-one, with his
faculties entire, his heart warm, and his temper gay;) Sir David
Dalrymple, Lord Hailes; Mr. Maclaurin[132], advocate; Dr. Gregory, who
now worthily fills his father's medical chair[133]; and my uncle, Dr.
Boswell. This was one of Dr. Johnson's best days. He was quite in his
element. All was literature and taste, without any interruption. Lord
Hailes, who is one of the best philologists in Great Britain, who has
written papers in _The World_[134], and a variety of other works in
prose and in verse, both Latin and English, pleased him highly. He told
him, he had discovered the life of _Cheynel_, in _The Student_[135], to
be his. JOHNSON. 'No one else knows it.' Dr. Johnson had, before this,
dictated to me a law-paper, upon a question purely in the law of
Scotland, concerning _vicious intromission_[136], that is to say,
intermeddling with the effects of a deceased person, without a regular
title; which formerly was understood to subject the intermeddler to
payment of all the defunct's debts. The principle has of late been
relaxed. Dr. Johnson's argument was, for a renewal of its strictness.
The paper was printed, with additions by me, and given into the Court of
Session.