At the head of all their reasonings, Natural Theologians usually place the celebrated argument from Design. It would be impossible, in discussing it, to reproduce here the many illustrative examples of Design which have been collected. It would likewise be useless; partly, because they are all easily accessible and mostly well known; partly, because their appositeness as _illustrations_ is now fully admitted; and the controversy turns upon questions of another and more abstract kind. It is asked whether the analogy founded on these instances is relevant?--whether it proves too little, or too much?--and, how far the inferences drawn from such examples really go? Our plan will, therefore, be to devote our second Chapter to the examination of such objections; to the review and elucidation of the argument from Design. But if the reader wishes really to study the various questions closely connected with this celebrated line of thought, and to view the reasoning in a shape so complete as to be at once relevant and satisfactory, he may be pleased to bestow a leisure hour on the consecutive perusal of Chapters II., V., and VI., with their appended notes and illustrations. The _third_ Chapter is intended as a critical propædeutic or foundation for the constructive science of Natural Theology. So far as our experience of men in great cities teaches anything with respect to the speculative difficulties which keep them from God, it seems to teach one undoubted fact. There is grounded in their minds a persuasion (underlying all further objections), that, whatever else we can know, little or nothing is to be learned concerning God. The idea of Theism is thus isolated from every other idea; and there is a presumption against all reasoning which in any way leads up to a determinate thought of the Divine Being or the Divine attributes. Some such doubters allege the necessary limitation of human knowledge in general:-- "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man." But, is not one chief object in knowing man, to acquaint ourselves with God? In this spirit Quarles says:-- "Man is man's A B C; there's none that can Read God aright, unless he first spell man." We may be perfectly sure that every human being, who (as Pope continues) hangs between the sceptic and the stoic,-- "In doubt to deem himself a god or beast," will never arrive at any knowledge of God whatsoever. Others, again, who suppose mankind to know a great deal, conceive all special thought which transcends the every-day human circle, to be encompassed by a number of difficulties exceptionally its own. If, it is said, there are angelic natures, they must needs pity our poor attempts to survey _super_-human or _extra_-human spheres of existence:-- "Superior beings, when of late they saw A mortal man unfold all nature's law, Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape, And show'd a Newton as we show an ape."[5]