ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 37 



©f many thousand individuals, like the great prize in a lot- 

 tery, or like some singularity in nature, but the happy 

 chance of a whole species ; nor of one species out of 

 many thousand species, with which we are acquainted, but 

 of by far the greatest number of all that exist ; and that 

 under varieties, not casual or capricious, but bearing marks 

 of being suited to their respective exigencies : that all 

 this should have taken place, merely because something 

 must have occupied those points in every animal's fore- 

 head ; or, that all this should be thought to be accounted 

 for, by the short answer " that whatever was there must 

 have had some form or other," is too absurd to be made 

 more so by any argumentation. We are not contented 

 with this answer, we find no satisfaction in it, by way of 

 accounting for appearances of organization far short of 

 those of the eye, such as we observe in fossil shells, petri- 

 fied bones, or other substances which bear the vestiges of 

 animal or vegetable recrements, but which, either in re- 

 spect of utility, or of the situation in which they are dis- 

 covered, may seem accidental enough. It is no way of 

 accounting even for these things, to say that the stone, for 

 instance, which is shown to us, (sup».x)8ing the question to 

 be concerning a petrification,) must have contained some 

 internal conformation or other. Nor does it mend the an- 

 swer to add, with respect to the singularity of the confor- 

 mation, that, after the event, it is no longer to be comput- 

 ed what the chances were against it. This is always to be 

 computed, v/hen the question is, whether an useful or imi- 

 tative conformation be the produce of chance or not. I desire 

 no greater certainty in reasoning, than that by which 

 chance is excluded from the present disposition of the nat- 

 ural world. Universal experience is against it. What 

 does chance ever do for us? In the human body, for in- 

 stance, chance, i. e. the operation of causes without design, 

 may produce a wen, a wart, a mole, a pimple, but never an 

 eye. Amongst inanimate substances, a clod, a pebble, a 

 liquid drop might be ; but never was a watch, a telescope, 

 an organized body of any kind, answering a valuable pur- 

 pose by a complicated mechanism, the effect of chance. 

 In no assignable instance hath such a thing existed without 

 intention somewhere. 



IV. There is another answer, which has the same ef- 

 fect as the resolving of things into chance ; which answer 

 would persuade us to believe, that the eye, the animal to 

 which it belongs, every other animal, every plant, indeed 



