from defign remains as it was. Marks of defign and contrivance are no more accounted for now, than they were before. In the fame thing, we may afk for the cause of different properties. We may afk for the cause of the colour of a body, of its hardness, of its heat; and these causes may be all different. We are now asking for the cause of that fubferviency to an ufe, that relation to an end, which we have remarked in the watch before us. No answer is given to this queftion by telling us that a preceding watch produced it. There cannot be design without a defigner; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; fubferviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means fuitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, difpofition of parts, fubferviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to an use, imply the prefence of intelligence and mind. No one, therefore, can rationally believe, that the infenfible, inanimate watch, from which the watch before us iffued, was the the proper cause of the mechanism we fo much admire in it; could be truly said to have conftructed the inftrument, difpofed its parts, affigned their office, determined their order, action, and mutual dependency, combined their feveral motions into one refult, and that also a refult connected with the utilities of other beings. All these properties, therefore, are as much unaccounted for, as they were before. IV. Nor is any thing gained by running the difficulty further back, i. e. by fuppofing the watch before us to have been produced from another watch, that from a former, and fo on indefinitely. Our going back ever so far brings us no nearer to the leaft degree of fatisfaction upon the fubject. Contrivance is ftill unaccounted for. We ftill want a contriver. A defigning mind is neither fupplied by this fuppofition, nor difpenfed with. If the difficulty were diminished the further we went back, by going back indefinitely we might exhauft it. And this is the only cafe to which this fort of reasoning applies. Where there is a tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, a continual approach towards a limit, there, by fuppofing the number of terms to be what is called infinite, we may conceive the limit to be attained: but where there is no such tendency or approach, nothing is effected by lengthening the feries. There is no difference as to the point in question, (whatever there may be as to many points,) between one feries and another; between a feries which is finite, and a series which is infinite. A chain, composed of an infinite number of links, can no more fupport itself, than a chain composed of a finite number of links. And of this we are affured, (though we never can have tried the experiment,) because, by increasing the number of links, from ten for inftance to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, &c. we make not the smallest approach, we observe not the smallest tendency, towards self-support. There is no difference in this refpect (yet there may be a great difference in feveral refpects), between a chain of a greater or lefs length, between one chain and another, between one that is finite and one that is indefinite. This very much resembles the cafe before us. The machine, which we are infpecting, demonftrates, by its conftruction, contrivance and defign. Contrivance must have had a contriver, design, a designer; whether the machine im mediately mediately proceeded from another machine or not. That circumftance alters not the cafe. That other machine may, in like manner, have proceeded from a former machine: nor does that alter the cafe: contrivance must have had a contriver. That former one from one preceding it no alteration ftill: a contriver is still neceffary. No tendency is perceived, no approach towards a diminution of this neceffity. It is the fame with any and every fucceffion of thefe machines; a fucceffion of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand; with one feries as with another; a feries which is finite, as with a feries which is infinite. In whatever other refpects they may differ, in this they do not. In all equally, contrivance and design are unaccounted for. The question is not fimply, How came the first watch into exiftence? which question, it may be pretended, is done away by fuppofing the series of watches thus produced from one another to have been infinite, and confequently to have had no fuch first, for which it was necessary to provide a caufe. This, perhaps, would have been nearly the ftate of the queftion, if nothing had been before us but an unorganized, unmechanized, fubftance, without mark or indication of contrivance. It might 8 be be difficult to fhew that fuch fubftance could not have exifted from eternity, either in fucceffion (if it were poffible, which I think it is not, for unorganized bodies to fpring from one another), or by individual perpetuity. But that is not the question now. To fuppofe it to be fo, is to fuppofe that it made no difference whether we had found a watch or a ftone. As it is, the metaphyfics of that queftion have no place; for, in the watch which we are examining, are feen contrivance, defign; an end, a purpofe; means for the end, adaptation to the purpose. And the question, which irresistibly preffes upon our thoughts, is, whence this contrivance and defign? The thing required is the intending mind, the adapting hand, the intelligence by which that hand was directed. This queftion, this demand, is not shaken off, by increasing a number or fucceffion of fubftances, deftitute of thefe properties; nor the more, by increasing, that number to infinity. If it be faid, that, upon the fuppofition 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 caufe for the watch in my hand, viz. the watch from which it proceeded, |