14 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER II. 



STATE OF THE ARGUMENT CONTIJ^UED 



Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found 

 the watch should after some time disco,ver, that in addition 

 to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it 

 possessed the unexpected property of producing in the course 

 of its movement another watch hke itself — the thing is con- 

 ceivable ; that it contained within it a mechanism, a system 

 of parts — a mould, for instance, or a complex adjustment of 

 lathes, files, and other tools — evidently and separately cal- 

 culated for this purpose ; let us inquire 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 object of 

 the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intricate, yet in 

 many parts intelligible mechanism by which it was carried 

 on, he would perceive in this new observation 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 ivitliout this property, or 

 which is the same thing, before this property had been no- 

 ticed, 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 w^atch before liim 

 were iji some soise the maker of the watch which was fab- 

 ricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a very 

 different sense from that in which a carpenter, for instance, 

 is the maker of a chair — the author of its contrivance, 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 



