FUNCTIONS OF ANIMALS, &C. 
45 
of the matter of tears, its outlet or communication with the 
nose for carrying off the liquid after the eye is washed with 
it; these provisions compose altogether an apparatus, a 
system of parts, a preparation of means, so manifest in their 
design, so exquisite in their contrivance, so successful in 
their issue, so precious, and so infinitely beneficial in their 
use, as, in my opinion, to bear down all doubt that can be 
raised upon the subject. And what I wish, under the title 
of the present chapter, to observe is, that if other parts 
of nature were inaccessible to our inquiries, or even if 
other parts of nature presented nothing to our examination 
but disorder and confusion, the validity of this example 
would remain the same. If there were but one watch in 
the world, it would not be less certain that it had a maker. 
If we had never in our lives seen any but one single kind 
of hydraulic machine, yet, if of that one kind we understood 
the mechanism and use, we should be as perfectly assured 
that it proceeded from the hand, and thought, and skill of 
a workman, as if we visited a museum of the arts, and saw 
collected there twenty different kinds of machines for 
drawing water, or a thousand different kinds for other 
purposes. Of this point, each machine is a proof, inde¬ 
pendently of all the rest. So it is with the evidences of a 
divine agency. The proof is not a conclusion which lies 
at the end of a chain of reasoning, of which chain each 
instance of contrivance is only a link, and of which, if one 
link fail, the whole falls; but it is an argument separately 
supplied by every separate example. An error in stating 
an example affects only that example. The argument is 
cumulative, in the fullest sense of that term. The eye 
proves it without the ear; the ear without the eye. The 
proof in each example is complete; for when the design of 
the part, and the conduciveness of its structure to that de¬ 
sign is shown, the mind may set itself at rest; no future 
consideration can detract anything from the force of the 
example. 
CHAPTER VII 
OF THE MECHANICAL AND IMMECHANICAL PARTS AND FUNC¬ 
TIONS OF ANIMALS AND VEGETABLES. 
It is not that every part of an animal or vegetable has 
not proceeded from a contriving mind; or that every part 
is not constructed with a view to its proper end and pur- 
