2. The connexion of the laws of the material world with an intelligence which preconceived and instituted the law, which is thus, as we perceive, so generally impressed on the common apprehension of mankind, has also struck no less those who have studied nature with a more systematic attention, and with the peculiar views which belong to science. The laws which such persons learn and study, seem, indeed, most naturally to lead to the conviction of an intelligence which originally gave to the law its form. What we call a general law is, in truth, a form of expression including a number of facts of like kind. The facts are separate; the unity of view by which we associate them, the character of generality and of law, resides in those relations which are the object of the intellect. The law once apprehended by us, takes in our minds the place of the facts themselves, and is said to _govern_ or determine them, because it determines our anticipations of what they will be. But we cannot, it would seem, conceive a law, founded on such intelligible relations, to govern and determine the facts themselves, any otherwise than by supposing also an intelligence by which these relations are contemplated, and these consequences realized. We cannot then represent to ourselves the universe governed by general laws otherwise than by conceiving an intelligent and conscious Deity, by whom these laws were originally contemplated, established, and applied. This perhaps will appear more clear, when it is considered that the laws of which we speak are often of an abstruse and complex kind, depending upon relations of space, time, number, and other properties, which we perceive by great attention and thought. These relations are often combined so variously and curiously, that the most subtle reasonings and calculations which we can form are requisite in order to trace their results. Can such laws be conceived to be instituted without any exercise of knowledge and intelligence? Can material objects apply geometry and calculation to themselves? Can the lenses of the eye, for instance, be formed and adjusted with an exact suitableness to their refractive powers, while there is in the agency which has framed them, no consciousness of the laws of light, of the course of rays, of the visible properties of things? This appears to be altogether inconceivable.