APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT. 
13 
is found, in the course of its movement, to produce anoth¬ 
er watch, similar to itself: and not only so, but we perceive 
in it a system or organization, separately calculated for that 
purpose. What effect would this discovery have or ought 
it to have, upon our former inference? What, as hath al¬ 
ready been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our ad¬ 
miration of the skill which had been employed in the for¬ 
mation of such a machine! Or shall it, instead of this, 
all at once turn us round to an opposite conclusion, viz. 
that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the 
business, although all other evidences of art and skill re¬ 
main as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art 
be now added to the rest? Can this be maintained with¬ 
out absurdity? Yet this is atheism. 
CHAPTER III. 
t ' 
APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT. 
This is atheism: for every indication of contrivance, ev¬ 
ery manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, ex¬ 
ists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side 
of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree 
which exceeds all computation. I mean, that the contriv¬ 
ances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the com¬ 
plexity, subtilty, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still 
more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and 
variety: yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently 
mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evi¬ 
dently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, 
than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. 
I know no better method of introducing so large a sub¬ 
ject, than that of comparing a single thing with a single thing; 
an eye, for example, with a telescope. As far as the ex¬ 
amination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the 
same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is 
that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are 
made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the 
laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of 
light are regulated. I speak not of the origin of the laws 
themselves; but such laws being fixed, the construction, 
in both cases, is adapted to them. For instance; these 
laws require, in order to produce the same effect, that the 
vays of light, in passing from water into the eye, should be 
B 
