Evolution, Old New | Page 7

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 that would have answered the use which 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: we see a cylindrical box containing a coiled
elastic spring, which, by its endeavours to relax itself, turns round the
box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake
of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the
fusee. We then find a series of wheels the teeth of which catch in, and
apply to each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the
balance, and from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time by
the size and shape of those wheels so regulating the motion as to
terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression,
to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the
wheels are made of brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of
steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch

there is placed a glass, a material employed on no other part of the
work, but in the room of which if there had been any other than a
transparent substance, the hour could not have been observed without
opening the case. This mechanism being observed, ... the inference, we
think, is inevitable that the watch must have had a maker; that there
must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an
artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it
actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed its
use."[12]
. . . . . .
"That an animal is a machine, is a proposition neither correctly true nor
wholly false.... I contend that there is a mechanism in animals; that this
mechanism is as properly such, as it is in machines made by art; that
this mechanism is intelligible and certain; that it is not the less so
because it often begins and terminates with something which is not
mechanical; that wherever it is intelligible and certain, it demonstrates
intention and contrivance, as well in the works of nature as in those of
art; and that it is the best demonstration which either can afford."[13]
There is only one legitimate inference deducible from these premises if
they are admitted as sound, namely, that there must have existed "at
some time, and in some place, an artificer" who formed the animal
mechanism after much the same mental processes of observation,
endeavour, successful contrivance, and after a not wholly unlike
succession of bodily actions, as those with which a watchmaker has
made a watch. Otherwise the conclusion is impotent, and the whole
argument becomes a mere juggle of words.
"Now, supposing or admitting," continues Paley, "that we know
nothing of the proper internal constitution of a gland, or of the mode of
its acting upon the blood; then our situation is precisely like that of an
unmechanical looker-on who stands by a stocking loom, a corn mill, a
carding machine, or a threshing machine, at work, the fabric and
mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from
his sight by the outside case; or if seen, would be too complicated for
his uninformed, uninstructed understanding to comprehend. And what

is that situation? This spectator, ignorant as he is, sees at one end a
material enter the machine, as unground grain the mill, raw cotton the
carding machine, sheaves of unthreshed corn the threshing machine,
and when he casts his eye to the other end of the apparatus, he sees the
material issuing from it in a new state and what is more, a state
manifestly adapted for its future uses: the grain in meal fit for the
making of bread, the wool in rovings fit for the spinning into threads,
the sheaf in corn fit for the mill. Is it necessary that this man, in order to
be convinced that design, that intention, that contrivance has been
employed about the machine, should be allowed to pull it to pieces,
should be enabled to examine the parts separately, explore their action
upon one another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or
successive, upon the material which is presented to them? He may long
to do this to satisfy his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his
theoretic knowledge; ... but for the purpose of ascertaining the
existence of counsel and design in