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certain seeds, which, being scattered into is there in that infinite progression? [Pt. IV.)
    the surrounding chaos, vegetate into new worlds. A comet, for instance, is the seed of a world.... [Pt. VII.]
    Cleanthes has no satisfactory responses to these rhetorical questions, and there is worse to come. Cleanthes insists that God's mind is like the human —
    One more wild possibility for good measure:
    and agrees when Philo adds "the liker the better." But, then, Philo presses on, is God's mind perfect, "free from every error, mistake, or incoherence in his undertakings" (Pt. V)? There is a rival hypothesis to rule out: The Brahmins assert, that the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again, and And what surprise must we entertain, when we find him a stupid resolving it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony, mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a little contemptible succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, animal, whose operation we are never likely to take for a model of the deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many whole universe. But still here is
    worlds might have

    32 TELL ME WHY
    Hume's Close Encounter 33

    a new species of analogy, even in our globe. And were there a planet serve a constancy in the forms, its situation must, of necessity, have all the wholly inhabited by spiders (which is very possible), this inference would same appearance of art and contrivance which we observe at present __
    there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes A defect in any of these particulars destroys the form; and the matter, of the origin of all things to design and intelligence, as explained by Clean-which it is composed, is again set loose, and is thrown into irregular thes. Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as well as from motions and fermentations, till it unite itself to some other regular form __
    the brain, it will be difficult for him to give a satisfactory reason. [Pt. VII.]
    Suppose ... that matter were thrown into any position, by a blind, unguided force; it is evident that this first position must in all probability be the most confused and most disorderly imaginable, without any resem-Cleanthes resists these onslaughts gamely, but Philo shows fatal flaws in blance to those works of human contrivance, which, along with a symme-every version of the argument that Cleanthes can devise. At the very end of try of parts, discover an adjustment of means to ends and a tendency to the Dialogues, however, Philo surprises us by agreeing with Cleanthes: self-preservation __ Suppose, that the actuating force, whatever it be, still continues in matter __ Thus the universe goes on for many ages in a
    ... die legitimate conclusion is that... if we are not contented with calling continued succession of chaos and disorder. But is it not possible that it the first and supreme cause a God or Deity, but desire to vary the expres-may settle at last... ? May we not hope for such a position, or rather be sion, what can we call him but Mind or Thought to which he is jusly assured of it, from the eternal revolutions of unguided matter, and may not supposed to bear a considerable resemblance? [Pt. XII.]
    this account for all the appearing wisdom and contrivance which is in the universe?
    Philo is surely Hume's mouthpiece in the Dialogues. Why did Hume cave Hmm, it seems that something like this might work... but Hume couldn't in? Out of fear of reprisal from the establishment? No. Hume knew he had quite take Philo's daring foray seriously. His final verdict: "A total suspense shown that the Argument from Design was an irreparably flawed bridge be-of judgment is here our only reasonable resource" (Pt. VIII). A few years