e is unsuccessful. If this is what
Paley means, his argument is indeed irrefragable; but if he does not
intend this, his words are frivolous, as so clear and acute a reasoner
must have perfectly well known.

Whether Paley's argument will prove a source of lasting strength to
himself or no, is a point which my readers will decide presently; but I
am very clear about its usefulness to my own position. I know few
writers whom I would willingly quote more largely, or from whom I find
it harder to leave off quoting when I have once begun. A few more
passages, however, must suffice.

"I challenge any man to produce in the joints and pivots of the most
complicated or the most flexible machine that ever was contrived, a
construction _more artificial_" (here we have it again), "or more
evidently artificial than the human neck. Two things were to be done.
The head was to have the power of bending forward and backward as in the
act of nodding, stooping, looking upwards or downwards; and at the same
time of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent, the
quadrant, we will say, or rather perhaps a hundred and twenty degrees of
a circle. For these two purposes two distinct contrivances are employed.
First the head rests immediately upon the uppermost part of the
vertebra, and is united to it by a hinge-joint; upon this joint the head
plays freely backward and forward as far either way as is necessary or
as the ligaments allow, which was the first thing required.

"But then the rotatory motion is thus unprovided for; therefore,
secondly, to make the head capable of this a further mechanism is
introduced, not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck,
where the hinge is, but between that bone and the next underneath it. It
is a mechanism resembling a tenon and mortise. This second or uppermost
bone but one has what the anatomists call a process, viz. a projection
somewhat similar in size and shape to a tooth, which tooth, entering a
corresponding hollow socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle,
upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports,
turns freely in a circle, and as far in the circle as the attached
muscles permit the head to turn. Thus are both motions perfect without
interfering with each other. When we nod the head we use the
hinge-joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck.
When we turn the head round, we use the tenon and mortise, which runs
be