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    all the common functions of our body still a mystery ? And what is the case with the mind ? Do we know what it is , and how it acts for us , upon us , or with us , or by us , bodily ? or how the body

    retaliates upon that other us , the mind ? Can we analyse our own motives , feelings , or sensations ? The operations of our being , and its conditions , physical and mental , are known to us no further than the surface .

    Yet we , thus comprehending so small a portion of the universe , knowing so little of so small a part , — even of that which we inhabit—even of that which we are , pretend to comprehend something definitely

    of the Universal 'Creator , to understand his motives , to measure and compare his power , to predicate his means , and anatomise his operations . Perhaps the much contemned pride of

    humanity never fell with so mad an ambition , even at those moments , when , upon the principle of extremes meeting , it professes to bow down with the most conscious humility .

    We have been led to these reflections by a recent work from the pen of Mr Babbage , which exhibits the defects of the class in question in an unusual degree . Mr Babbage's high and deserved reputation will suffer the less from his ,

    certainly , not very great success in the present instance , since the undertaking is of a kind by no means to be expected from one oppressed with the number and importance of

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    other and more familiar avocations . Indeed the writer has obviously , from the fragmentary and unarranged condition in which the work appears , been unable to spare the time requisite for putting his manuscript

    in order . This , however , sets the advisableness of publishing it at all in a still more questionable light . There is less , indeed very little , of the more legitimate matter which is demanded by a work on Natural

    Theology , and much of the most objectionable style of reasoning usually adopted in such writings . We find a constant tendency to impute human motives , human actions , and human expedients to the Divine Power .

    We constantly come across such phrases as " pre-contrived arrangement , " a " contriving mind / ' and similar terms derogatory to an exalted conception of Infinite Power , whose will is consummation . With a

    singular blindness to its significancy , Mr Babbage commences his work with a remark on the very narrow and imperfect means to which we are limited in forming a conception of Infinite Power . Should not

    this first sentence of his " Introduction" have made the writer lay down his pen ? He subsequently proceeds to the startling comparison of the Infinite Universe and its

    Creator with the Calculating Machine and its arranger ! In illustration of Free Will , for instance , Mr Babbage informs us , that the director of the Calculating Machine can

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    126 The Purposes of Natural Theology Mistaken *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 1, 1837, page 126, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1834/page/54/