40 
APPLICATION OF THE 
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 a 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 de¬ 
riving their curious structures from the thought and design 
of their inventors and contrivers, in truth derive them from 
no other origin than this, viz. 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 dogfish was made rough and granulated 
on purpose for the polishing of wood, and the use of cabinet¬ 
makers. Therefore the distinction is intelligible. But 1 
think that there is very little place for it in the works of 
nature. When roundly and generally affirmed 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 the fish skin, 
were substances accidentally configurated, which he had 
picked up, and converted to his use; that his adzes, saws, 
planes and gimlets, were not made, as we suppose, to hew 
