ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 39 



remains of an indefinite variety of existences ; of variety 

 which rejects all plan. The hypothesis teaches, that every 

 possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found 

 its way into existence (by what cause or in what manner is 

 not said,) and that those which were badly formed, perish- 

 ed ; but how or why those which survived should be cast, 

 as we see that plants and animals are cast, into regular 

 classes, the hypothesis does not explain ; or rather the hy- 

 pothesis is inconsistent with this phenomenon. 



The hypothesis, indeed, is hardly deserving of the con- 

 sideration which we have given to it. What should we 

 think of the man, who, because we had never ourselves 

 seen watches, telescopes, stocking-mills, steam-engines, &c. 

 made ; knew not how they were made ; or could prove by 

 testimony when they were made, or by whom ; — would 

 have us believe that these machines, instead of deriving 

 their curious structures from the thought and design of 

 their inventors and contrivers, in truth, derive them from 

 no other origin than this ; that a mass of metals and oth- 

 er materials having run, when melted, into all possible fig- 

 ures, and combined themselves in all possible forms, and 

 shapes, and proportions ; these things which we see, are 

 what were left from the accident, as best worth preserving ; 

 and, as such, are become the remaining stock of a maga- 

 zine, which at one time or other, has, by this means, con- 

 tained every mechanism, useful and useless, convenient 

 and inconvenient, .into which such like materials could be 

 thrown ? I cannot distinguish the hypothesis as applied 

 to the works of nature, from this solution, which no one 

 would accept, as applied to a collection of machines. 



V. To the marks of contrivance discoverable in animal 

 bodies, and to the argument deduced from them in proof of 

 design, and of a designing Creator, this turn is sometimes 

 attempted to be given, viz. that the parts were not intended 

 for the use, but that the use arose out of the parts. This 

 distinction is intelligible. A cabinet-maker rubs his ma- 

 hogany with fish-skin ; yet it would be too much to assert 

 that the skin of the dog-fish was made rough and granulated 

 on purpose for the polishing of wood, and the use of cabinet- 

 makers. Therefore the distinction is intelligible. But I 

 think that there is very little place for it in the works of 

 nature. When roundly and generally aflirmed of them, as 

 it hath sometimes been, it amounts to such another stretch 

 of assertion, as it would be to say, that all the implements 

 of the cabinet-maker's workshop, as well as his fish-skin, 



