which leads and directs everything to
His ends, with a gentle and insensible, though ever an omnipotent force.

We have seen, as it were, the architecture and frame of the universe;
the just proportion of all its parts; and the bare cast of the eye has
sufficed us to find and discover even in an ant, more than in the sun, a
wisdom and power that delights to exert itself in polishing and adorning
its vilest works.

This is obvious, without any speculative discussion, to the most
ignorant of men; but what a world of other wonders should we discover
should we penetrate into the secrets of physics, and dissect the inward
parts of animals, which are framed according to the most perfect
mechanics.

Let a man study the world as much as he pleases; let him descend into
the minutest details; dissect the vilest of animals; narrowly consider
the least grain of corn sown in the ground, and the manner in which it
germinates and multiplies; attentively observe with what precautions a
rose-bud blows and opens in the sun, and closes again at night; and he
will find in all these more design, conduct, and industry than in all
the works of art. Nay, what is called the art of men is but a faint
imitation of the great art called the laws of nature, which the impious
did not blush to call blind chance. Is it, therefore, a wonder that
poets animated the whole universe, bestowed wings upon the winds, and
arrows on the sun, and described great rivers impetuously running to
precipitate themselves into the sea and trees shooting up to heaven to
repel the rays of the sun by their thick shades? These images and
figures have also been received in the language of the vulgar, so
natural it is for men to be sensible of the wonderful art that fills all
nature.

Poetry did only ascribe to inanimate creatures the art and design of the
Creator, who does everything in them. From the figurative language of
the poets those notions passed into the theology of the heathens, whose
divines were the poets. They supposed an art, a power, or a wisdom,
which they called _numen_ [divinity], in creatures the most destitute of
understanding. With them great rivers were gods, and spring naiads.
Woods and mountains had their particular deities; flowers had their
Flora; and fruits, Pomona. After all, the more a man contemplates
nature, the more he discovers in it an inexhaustible stock of wisdom,
which is, as it were, the soul of the universe.

What must we infer fro