12 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



complishing that end, without the end ever having 

 been contemplated, or the means accommodated 

 to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subser- 

 viency of means to an end, relation of instruments 

 to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and 

 mind. No one, therefore, can rationally believe, 

 that the insensible, inanimate watch, from which 

 the watch before us issued, was the proper cause 

 of the mechanism we so much admire in it ; — 

 could be truly said to have constructed the instru- 

 ment, disposed its parts, assigned their office, de- 

 termined their order, action, and mutual depen- 

 dency, combined their several motions into one re- 

 sult, and that also a result connected with the utili- 

 ties of other beings. All these properties, there- 

 fore, are as much unaccounted for as they were 

 before. 



IV. Nor is anything gained by running the dif- 

 ficulty farther back, i. e., by supposing the watch 

 before us to have been produced from another 

 w^atch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. 

 Our o'oino- back ever so far, brin^rs us no nearer to 

 the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. 

 Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still 

 want a contriver. A designing mind is neither 

 supplied by this supposition, nor dispensed with. 

 If the difficulty were diminished the farther we 

 went back, by going back indefinitely we might 

 exhaust it. And this is the only case to which 

 this sort of reasoning applies. Where there is a 

 tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, 



