immediately by the hand of an artificer, yet doth not this alteration in any-wise affect the inference, that an artificer had been originally employed and concerned in the production. Th ument from desi mains as it wa

Marks of design and contrivance are no more accounted for ñ W than they were before. In the same thing, we may ask for the cause of different properties. We may ask for the cause of the color of a body, of its hardness, of its heat; and these causes may be all different. We are now asking for the cause of that subserviency to a ase, that relation to an end, which we have remarked in the watch before us. No answer is given to this question by telling us that a preceding watch produced it. There cannot be design wit igner; contriyance, without a

a purpose, without that which coul a purpose; ...:";. to an end, and executing their . in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind. No one, therefore, can rationally believe, that the insensible, inanimate watch, from which the watch before us issued, was the proper cause of the mechanism we so much admire in it;-could be truly said to have constructed the instrument, disposed its parts, assign ed their office, determined their order, action, and mutual dependency, combined their several motions into one result, and that also a result connected with the utilities of other beings. All these properties, therefore, are as much unaccounted for as they were before. IV. Nor is anything gained by running the difficulty farther back, i.e. by supposing the watch before us to have been produced from another watch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. Our going back ever so far brings no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still ... “...i. neither supplied by this supposition, nor dispensed with. If the difficulty were diminished the farther we went back, by going back indefinitely we might exhaustit. And this is the only case to which this sort of reasoning applies. Where there is a tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, a continual approach towards a limit, there, by supposing the number of terms to be what is alled infinite, we may conceive the limit to be attained: but where there is no such tendency, or approach, nothing is effected by lengthening the series. There is no difference, as to the point in question, (whatever there may be as to many points,) between one series and another; between a series which is finite, and a series which is infinite. A chain, composed of an infinite number of links, can no more support itself, than a chain composed of a finite number of links. And of this we are assured, (though we never can have tried the experiment,) because, by inci easing the number of links, from ten, for instance, to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, &c. we make not the smallest approach, we observe not the smallest tendency, towards self-support. There is no difference in this respect (yet there may be a great difference in several respects) between a chain of a greater or less length, between one chain and another, between one that is finite and one that is infinite. This very much resembles the case before us. The machine which we are inspecting demonstrates, by its / *~. construction, contrivance and design. Contrivance must have had a contriver; design, a designer; whether the machine immediately proceeded from another machine or not. \ That circumstance alters not the case. That : ) machine may, in like manner, have proceeded from a former machine: nor does that alter the case; contrivance must have had a contriver. That former one from one preceding it: no alteration still; a contriver is still necessary. No tendency is perceived, no approach towards a diminution of this necessity. It is the same with any and every succession of these machines; a succession of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand; with one series as with another; a series which is finite, as with a series which is infinite. In whatever other respects they may differ, in this they do not. In all, equally, contrivance and design are unaccounted for. z \ The question is not simply, How came the first watch into existence? .######### is done away by supposing the series of watches thus produced from one another to have been infinite, and consequently to have had no *ś. sary to provide à Gäuse.This, perhaps, would have been nearly the state of the question, if nothing had been before us but an unorganized, unmechanized substance, without mark or indication of contrivance. It might be difficult to show that such substance could not have existed from eternity, either in succession (if it were possible, which I think

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it is not, for unorganized bodies to spring from one another) or by individual perpetuity. But that is not the question now. To suppose it to be so, is to suppose that it made

o difference whether we had found a watch or a stone. As it is, the metaphysics of that question have no place; for, in the watch which we are examining, are seen con|trivance, design; an end, a purpose; means for the end, adaptation to the purpose. And the question which irresistibly presses upon our thoughts, is, whence this contrivance and design? The thing required is the intending mind, the adapting hand, the intelligence by which that hand was directed. This question, this demand, is not shaken off, by increasing a number or succession of sub

Hstances, destitute of these properties; nor the more, by in

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creasing that number to infinity. If it be said, that, upon
the supposition of one watch being produced from another
in the course of that other's movements, and by means of
the mechanism within it, we have a cause for the watch in
my hand, viz. the watch from which it proceeded: I deny,
that for the design, the contrivance, the suitableness of
means to an end, the adaptation of instruments to a use, (all
which we discover in a watch,) we have any cause what-
ever. It is in vain, therefore, to assign a series of such
causes, or to allege that a series may be carried back to
infinity; for I do not admit that we have yet any cause at
all of the phenomena, still less any series of causes either
finite or infinite. Here is contrivance, but no contriver:
proofs of design, but no designer.
V. Our observer would farther also reflect, that the
maker of the watch before him, was, in truth and reality,
the maker of every watch produced from it; there being
no difference (except that the latter manifests a more ex-
quisite skill) between the making of another watch with
his own hands, by the mediation of files, lathes, chisels, &c.
and the disposing, fixing, and inserting of these instru-
ments, or of others equivalent to them, in the body of the
watch already made, in such a manner as to form a new
watch in the course of the movements which he had given
to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools in-
stead of another.
The conclusion which the first examination of the watch,
of its works, construction, and movement, suggested, was,
that it must have had, for the cause and author of that con-
struction, an artificer, who understood its mechanism, and
designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second
examination presents us with a new discovery. The watch

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s found, in the course of its movement, to produce another watch, similar to itself: and not only so, but we perceive in rit a system or organization, separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would this discovery have or ought it to have, upon our former inference? What, as hath al. ready been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our admiration of the skill which had been employed in the formation of such a machine! Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round to an opposite conclusion, viz that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the r business, although all other evidences of art and skill re-o o main as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art be now added to the rest? Can this be maintained without absurdity? Yet this is atheism. 2

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This is atheism: for every indication of contrivance, ev-,! ery manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, ex

ists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side \ of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree

which exceeds all computation. I mean, that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivanc , in the complexity, subtilty; iOsity of the mechanism; and still

more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety: yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. I know.no better method of introducing so large a subject, than that of comparing a single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, with a telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely thes same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is D that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the y laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of T light are regulated. I speak not of the origin of the laws themselves; but such laws being fixed, the construction, , ... in both cases, is adapted to them. For instance; these laws require, in order to produce the same effect, that the ways of light, in passing from water into the eye, should be lo,

refracted by a more convex surface than when it passes out of air into the eye. Accordingly we find, that the eye of a fish, in that part of it called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial animals. [Plate II. fig. 1.] What plainer manifestation of design can there be than this

difference? What could a mathematical instrument-maker have done more, to show his knowledge of his principle,

his application of that knowledge, his suiting of his means to his end; I will not say to display the compass or excellence of his skill and art, for in these all comparison is indecorous, but to testify counsel, choice, consideration, Pol - - ***** ****** - -e- or o some it may appear a difference sufficient to destroy all similitude between the eye and the telescope, that the one is a perceiving organ, the other an unperceiving instrument. The fact is, that they are both instruments. And, as to the mechanism, at least as to mechanism being emTloyed, and even as to the kind of it, this circumstance varies not the analogy at all. For, observe what the constitution of the eye is. [Plate II. fig. 2..] It is necessary, in order to produce distinct vision, that an image or picture of the object be formed at the bottom of the eye. Whence this necessity arises, or how the picture is connected with the sensation, or contributes to it, it may be difficult, nay we will confess, if you please, impossible for us to search out. But the present question is not concerned in the inquiry. It may be true, that, in this, and in other instances, we trace mechanical contrivance a certain way; and that then we come to something which is not mechanical, or which is inscrutable. But this affects not the certainty of our investigation, as far as we have gone. The difference between \ an animal and an automatic statue, consists in this, that, in the animal, we trace the mechanism to a certain point, and then we are stopped; either the mechanism becoming too subtile for our discernment, or something else beside the known laws of mechanism taking place: whereas, in "..." for the comparatively few motions of which it is capable; we trace the mechanism throughout. But, up to the limit, the reasoning is as clear and certain in the one case as in the other. In the example before us, it is a matter of certainty, because it is a matter which experience o: observation demonstrate, that the formation of an im

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ge at the bottom of the eye is necessary to perfect vision *The image itself can be shown. Whatever affects the dis. tinctness of the image, affects the distinctness of the vision. The formation then of such an image being necessary (no.

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