40 



it is said, contrivance ; and contrivance proves a designer. This, I 

 take it, is a mode of reasoning which has been employed ; and it 

 must be confessed that the reasoning is not chargeable with 

 prolixity. 



12. How, it is fair to ask, do we come at the inference that 

 nothing can be constituted properly, so as to bear an exact relation 

 with other things, and to work with them for a general effect, but 

 by a previous designing by intellect? or, shorter, thus : what is the 

 proof that nothing regular can be accomplished without design? 

 Why it is so concluded, because we ourselves can produce little 

 better than confusion, unless we think, and frame to ourselves some 

 model of our purposes. Then it is concluded that nothing regular 

 and consistent can take place without design, because we are under 

 the necessity of designing in order to produce that which is consistent 

 and regular. This is the testimony for the inference, which must 

 also be examined. 



13. Is this then the whole sum of our experience in the mat- 

 ter of regular and harmonious production? Why, truly, no; if we 

 wish to compose a book, or a sentence, or construct a piece of 

 mechanism (the perfection of which will consist in its relation with 

 something else, which for the sake of distinction we may call a final 

 purpose), we must think and design for it. But in all the spon- 

 taneous operations in which we are not concerned, and which are far 

 more numerous than those in which we are concerned, we have no 

 evidence of a designing principle; we see nothing but the operation 

 of causes, we perceive no other dependence: and it is upon our ex- 

 perience of a diversity, that we make a distinction betweeen artificial 

 contrivances, and natural productions; that is, from our experience 

 of the works of design, we trust to the analogy between them to 

 infer the direction of design, where the conduct of it is not wit- 

 nessed; and relying upon this analogy, we pronounce all works of 

 art to be those of design, in opposition to the works of nature, 

 which being different from those of art, give rise to a distinction 

 rather than to an extension of the same class. 



14. Sticking close, then, to our experience, the question comes 

 to this issue, viz. as regular production is sometimes a consequence 

 of design, and sometimes the result of causes, in which design does 

 not appear, are we to conclude that regular productions are 

 necessarily dependent upon design, or that they sometimes only pro- 

 ceed from design, or that they invariably ensue, as has been hinted, 

 merely from causes, in the way of causation which has been before 

 described ? We find, in considering those questions, that the ex- 

 perience which should guide our decision is rather contradictory, as 

 we have examples of regular production in each way. But if there 

 is any truth in some former predications, design itself should ope- 

 rate in the general way of causes ; at any rate we cannot even grant 

 the distinction implied by these questions, without first ascertaining 

 how design itself is formed, and in what way it operates to produce 

 this harmony, upon which the proposition we are discussing It 



