order and arrangement of nature, the curious adjustment of
final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ;
all these bespeak in the clearest language one intelligent cause or
author. The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony. The
whole chorus of nature raises one hymn to the praises of its
Creator."--(II. p. 465.)

Though the rhetoric of Cleanthes may be admired, its irrelevancy to the
point at issue must be admitted. Wandering still further into the region
of declamation, he works himself into a passion:

"You alone, or almost alone, disturb this general harmony. You
start abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections: You ask me what is
the cause of this cause? I know not: I care not: that concerns not
me. I have found a Deity; and here I stop my inquiry. Let those go
further who are wiser or more enterprising."--(II. p. 466.)

In other words, O Cleanthes, reasoning having taken you as far as you
want to go, you decline to advance any further; even though you fully
admit that the very same reasoning forbids you to stop where you are
pleased to cry halt! But this is simply forcing your reason to abdicate
in favour of your caprice. It is impossible to imagine that Hume, of all
men in the world, could have rested satisfied with such an act of
high-treason against the sovereignty of philosophy. We may rather
conclude that the last word of the discussion, which he gives to Philo,
is also his own.

"If I am still to remain in utter ignorance of causes, and can
absolutely give an explication of nothing, I shall never esteem it
any advantage to shove off for a moment a difficulty, which, you
acknowledge, must immediately, in its full force, recur upon me.
Naturalists[32] indeed very justly explain particular effects by
more general causes, though these general causes should remain in
the end totally inexplicable; but they never surely thought it
satisfactory to explain a particular effect by a particular cause,
which was no more to be accounted for than the effect itself. An
ideal system, arranged of itself, without a precedent design, is
not a whit more explicable than a material one, which attains its
order in a like manner; nor is there any more difficulty in the
latter supposition than in the former."--(II. p. 466.)

It is obvious that, if Hume had been pushed, he must have admitte