n 
STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. 
it is not, for unorganized bodies to spring from one another) 
or by individual perpetuity. But that is not the question 
now. To suppose it to be so, is to suppose that it made 
no difference whether we had found a watch or a stone. 
As it is, the metaphysics of that question have no place; 
for, in the watch which we are examining, are seen con¬ 
trivance, design; an end, a purpose; means for the end, 
adaptation to the purpose. And the question which ir¬ 
resistibly presses upon our thoughts, is, whence this con¬ 
trivance and design? The thing required is the intending 
mind, the adapting hand, the intelligence by which that 
hand was directed. This question, this demand, is not 
shaken off, by increasing a number or succession of sub¬ 
stances, destitute of these properties; nor the more, by in¬ 
creasing that number to infinity. If it be said, that, upon 
the supposition of one watch being produced from another 
in the course of that other’s movements, and by means of 
the mechanism within it, we have a cause for the watch in 
my hand, viz. the watch from which it proceeded: I deny, 
that for the design, the contrivance, the suitableness of 
means to an end, the adaptation of instruments to a use, (all 
which we discover in a watch,) we have any cause what¬ 
ever. It is in vain, therefore, to assign a series of such 
causes, or to allege that a series may be carried back to 
infinity; for I do not admit that we have yet any cause at 
all of the phenomena, still less any series of causes either 
finite or infinite. Here is contrivance, but no contriver; 
proofs of design, but no designer. 
Y. Our observer would farther also reflect, that the 
maker of the watch before him, was, in truth and reality, 
the maker of every watch produced from it; there being 
no difference (except that the latter manifests a more ex¬ 
quisite skill) between the making of another watch with 
his own hands, by the mediation of files, lathes, chisels, &c. 
and the disposing, fixing, and inserting of these instru¬ 
ments, or of others equivalent to them, in the body of the 
watch already made, in such a manner as to form a new 
watch in the course of the movements which he had given 
to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools in¬ 
stead of another. 
The conclusion which the first examination of the watch, 
of its works, construction, and movement, suggested, was, 
that it must have had, for the cause and author of that con¬ 
struction, ah artificer, who understood its mechanism, and 
designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second 
examination presents us with a new discovery. The watch 
