STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. \f 



\y and separately calculated for this purpose ; let us in- 

 i{uire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his 

 former conclusion. 



I. The first effect would be to increase his admiration 

 of the contrivance, and his conviction of the consummate 

 skill of the contriver. Whether he regarded the ob- 

 ject of the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intri- 

 cate, yet in many parts intelligible meclianisin by which 

 it was carried on, he would perceive, in this new observa- 

 tion, nothing but an additional reason for doing what he 

 had already done ; for referring the construction of the 

 watch to design, and to supreme art. If that construction 

 without this property, or, which is the same thing, before 

 this property had been noticed, proved intention and art 

 to have been employed about it, still more strong would 

 the proof appear, when he came to the knowledge of this 

 further property, the crown and perfection of all the 

 rest. 



II. He would reflect, that though the watch before him 

 were, 171 some sense, the maker of the watch, which was 

 fabricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a 

 very different sense irom that, in which a carpenter, for 

 instance, is the maker of a chair , the author of its con- 

 trivance, the cause of the relation of its parts to their use. 

 With respect to these, the first watch was no cause at all 

 to the second , in no such sense as this, was it the author 

 of the constitution and order, either of the parts 'which 

 the new watch contained, or of the parts by the aid and 

 instrumentality of which it was produced. We uiight pos- 

 sibly say, but with great latitude of expression, that a 

 stream of water ground corn ; but no latitude of expres- 

 sion would allow us to say, no stretch of conjecture could 

 lead us to think, tiiat the stream of water built the mill, 

 though it were too ancient for us to know who the builder 

 was. What the stream of water does in the affair is nei- 

 ther more nor If^ss than this ; by the application of an in- 

 telligent impulse to a mechanism previously arranged, 

 arranged independently of it, and arranged by intelligence, 

 an effect is produced ; viz. the corn is ground. But the 

 effect results from the arrangement. The force of the 

 stream cannot be said to be the cause or author of the 

 effect, still less of the arrangement. Understanding and 

 plan in the formation of the mill were not the less neces^ 

 .sarv, for any share which the water has in grinding the 



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