8 
STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. 
VII. And not less surprised to be informed, that the 
watch in his hand was nothing more than the result of the 
laws of metallic nature. It is a perversion of language to 
assign any law as the efficient, operative cause of anything. 
A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode ac¬ 
cording to which an agent proceeds: it implies a power; 
for it is the order, according to which that power acts 
Without this agent, without this power, which are both dis¬ 
tinct from itself, the law does nothing; is nothing. The 
expression, “the law of metallic nature,” may sound strange 
and harsh to a philosophic ear; but it seems quite as justi¬ 
fiable as some others which are more familiar to him, such 
as “the law of vegetable nature,” “ the law of animal na¬ 
ture,” or indeed as “the law of nature” in general, when 
assigned as the cause of phenomena, in exclusion of agen¬ 
cy and power; or when it is substituted into the place of 
these. 
VIII. Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out 
of his conclusion, or from his confidence in its truth, by 
being told that he knew nothing at all about the matter. 
He knows enough for his argument. He knows the utility 
of the end: he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the 
means to the end. These points being known, his igno¬ 
rance of other points, his doubts concerning other points, 
affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The conscious¬ 
ness of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that 
which he does know. 
CHAPTER II. 
STATE OF THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 
Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found 
the watch, should, after sometime, discover, that, in ad¬ 
dition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed 
in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing, 
in the course of its movement, another watch like itself, 
(the thing is conceivable;) that it contained within it a 
mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a 
complex adjustment of lathes, files, and other tools, evident¬ 
ly and separately calculated for this purpose; let us in¬ 
quire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his 
former conclusion. 
