MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



9\9 



made immediately by the hand of 

 an artificer, yet doth not this alte- 

 ration in any wise affect the in- 

 I ference, that an artificer had been 

 originally employed and concerned 

 in the production. The argument 

 from design remains as it was. 

 Marks of design and contrivance 

 are no mere accounted for now 

 than they were before. In the 

 same thing, we may ask for the 

 cause of different properties. We 

 may ask for the cause of tfie colour 

 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 

 an use, 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 a design without a 

 designer ; contrivance without a 

 contriver ; order without choice ; 

 arrangement, without any thing ca- 

 pable of arranging ; subserviency 

 and relation to a purpose ; means 

 suitable to an end, and executing 

 tliiir office in accomplishing that 

 end, without the end cvi'r having 

 been contemplated, or the means 

 accommodated to it. Arrangement, 

 disposition of parts, subserviency 

 of means (o an end, relation of in- 

 struments to an use, im[)ly the pre- 

 scnccof intelligence and mind. JSo 

 one, therefore, ran rationally be- 

 lieve, that the insensible, inanimate 

 watch, from which the watch be- 

 fore us issued, was the jiroper cause 

 of the mechanism we so much ad- 

 mire in il; could be truly said to have 

 constructed the ijistrument, disposed 

 its |)arts, assigned their office, de- 

 termined their order, action, and 

 mutual dependency; combined their 

 Hcvcral motiouk into one result^ and 



that also a result connected witli 

 the utilities of other beings. All 

 these properties, therefore, are as 

 much unaccounted for as they were 

 before. 



4. Nor is any thing gained hj 

 running the difficulty further back, 

 i. e. by supposing the watch before 

 us to have been produced from ano- 

 ther watch, that from a former, and 

 so on indefinitely. Our going back 

 ever so far brings us n» nearer to 

 the least degree of satisfaction upon 

 the subject. Contrivance is still un- 

 accounted for. We still want a 

 contriver. A designing mind is 

 neither supplied by this supposition, 

 nor dispensed Avith. If the dif- 

 ficulty were diminished the further 

 we went back indefinitely, we might 

 exhaust it. And this is the only 

 case to which this sort of reasoninff 

 applies. Where there is a tendency, 

 or, as we increase the number of 

 terms, a continual approach to- 

 wards a limit, (there) by supposing 

 the number of terms to be what is 

 called infinite, we may conceive the 

 limit to be attained : but where 

 there is no such tendency or ap- 

 proach, nothing is effected by 

 lengthening the series. There is no 

 difference as to the pointin question, 

 (whatever there may be as to man^ 

 points,) between one series and ano- 

 ther ; between a series which is 

 finite, and a series which is infinite. 

 A chain composed of an infinite 

 number of links, can no more sup- 

 port itself than a chain composed of 

 a finite number of links. And of thi$ 

 we are assured, (though wenevercan 

 hiive tried the experiment,) because 

 by increasing the number of links, 

 from ten for instance to a hundred, 

 from a hundred to a thousand, &c. 

 we make not the smallest approach, 

 3 N 4 vre 



