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NATURAL THEOLOGY. 
CHAPTER I. 
STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. 
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against 
a stone , and were asked how the stone came to be there; 
I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the 
contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps 
be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But 
suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it 
should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that 
place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had be¬ 
fore given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might 
have always been there. Yet why should not this answer 
serve for the watch as well as for the stone ? Why is it 
not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For 
this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to 
inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not dis¬ 
cover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put 
together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and ad¬ 
justed as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated 
as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different 
parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a 
different size from what they are, or placed after any other 
manner, or in any other order, than that in which they 
are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried 
on in the machine, or none which would have answered the 
use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the 
plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one 
result: [See Plate I.]—We see a cylindrical box containing 
a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax itself, 
turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (ar¬ 
tificially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the 
action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then 
