in any manner
whatever." Least of all could it be sufficient to explain that the
watch 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 any thing. A law presupposes an agent,
for it is only the mode according to which our 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 distinct
from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing."

From the watch we are led on to the eye, which exhibits a skill of
design not less, but far greater, {16} than that of the man who gave us
the telescope. Then follows a detailed examination of the use of the
various bodily organs, the contrivances to be met with in vegetables
and animals, the marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the
provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes;
with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions--the long
neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot,
the sting of the bee--all furnishing an ever accumulating body of
irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an
intelligent Author of Nature.

That these arrangements had been expressly intended to meet the
circumstances of each particular case was assumed as necessarily
involved in the acceptance of any design at all. It is interesting to
observe that Paley did not think it improbable that the Deity may have
committed to another being--"nay, there may be many such agents and
many ranks of them"--the task of "drawing forth" special creations out
of the materials He had made and in subordination to His rules. This,
he thought, might in some degree account for the fact that contrivances
are not always perfected at once, and that many instruments and methods
are employed.

{17}

Of the goodness of the Creator no manner of doubt was entertained. For
proof of it attention was called to the fact that "in a vast plurality
of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the
contrivance is beneficial," and to the further fact that "the Deity has
superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for
any other purposes or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary,
might have been effected by the function of pain." Venomous animals
there were, no doubt, but the fang and the sting "may be no less
mer