matter more than motion? Has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? Is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it framed such laws,
Which but to guess, a Newton made immortal?-- 1480
If so, how each sage atom laughs at me,
Who think a clod inferior to a man!
If art, to form; and counsel, to conduct;
And that with greater far than human skill;
Resides not in each block;--a Godhead reigns.--
Grant, then, invisible, eternal, Mind;
That granted, all is solved.--But, granting that,
Draw I not o'er me a still darker cloud?
Grant I not that which I can ne'er conceive?
A being without origin, or end!-- 1490
Hail, human liberty! There is no God--
Yet, why? On either scheme that knot subsists;
Subsist it must, in God, or human race;
If in the last, how many knots beside,
Indissoluble all?--Why choose it there,
Where, chosen, still subsist ten thousand more?
Reject it, where, that chosen, all the rest
Dispersed, leave reason's whole horizon clear?
This is not reason's dictate; Reason says,
Close with the side where one grain turns the scale;-- 1500
What vast preponderance is here! can reason
With louder voice exclaim--Believe a God?
And reason heard, is the sole mark of man.
What things impossible must man think true,
On any other system! and how strange
To disbelieve, through mere credulity!"
If, in this chain, Lorenzo finds no flaw, 1507
Let it for ever bind him to belief.
And where the link, in which a flaw he finds?
And, if a God there is, that God how great!
How great that Power, whose providential care
Through these bright orbs' dark centres darts a ray!
Of nature universal threads the whole!
And hangs creation, like a precious gem,
Though little, on the footstool of his throne!
That little gem, how large! A weight let fall
From a fix'd star, in ages can it reach
This distant earth! Say, then, Lorenzo! where,
Where, ends this mighty building? where, begin
The suburbs of creation? where, the wall 1520
Whose battlements look o'er into the vale
Of non-existence! Nothing's strange abode!
Say, at what point of space Jehovah dropp'd
His slacken'd line, and laid his balance by;
Weigh'd worlds, and measured infinite, no more?
Where, rears His terminating pillar high
Its extra-mundane head? and says, to gods,
In c