“Under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary and accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. The natural, we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial. …we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly the production of a Being resembling, but infinitely greater than ourselves.”

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 250

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Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) 100
Scottish publisher and writer 1802–1871

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