frame all
the springs that make up that machine; but when a man supposes
moulds: first, he must affirm that every mould contains in little,
with unconceivable niceness, all the springs of the machine itself.
Now, it is beyond dispute that there is more art in making so
compound a work in little than in a larger bulk. Secondly, he must
suppose that every mould, which is an individual prepared for a
first generation, contains distinctly within itself other moulds
contained within one another ad infinitum, for all possible
generations, in all succeeding ages. Now what can be more artful
and more wonderful in matter of mechanism than such a preparation of
an infinite number of individuals, all formed beforehand in one from
which they are to spring? Therefore the moulds are of no use to
explain the generations of animals without supposing any art or
skill. For, on the contrary, moulds would argue a more artificial
mechanism and more wonderful composition.

What is manifest and indisputable, independently from all the
systems of philosophers, is that the fortuitous concourse of atoms
never produces, without generation, in any part of the earth, any
lions, tigers, bears, elephants, stags, bulls, sheep, cats, dogs, or
horses. These and the like are never produced but by the encounter
of two of their kind of different sex. The two animals that produce
a third are not the true authors of the art that shines in the
composition of the animal engendered by them. They are so far from
knowing how to perform that art, that they do not so much as know
the composition or frame of the work that results from their
generation. Nay, they know not so much as any particular spring of
it; having been no more than blind and unvoluntary instruments, made
use of for the performance of a marvellous art, to which they are
absolute strangers, and of which they are perfectly ignorant. Now I
would fain know whence comes that art, which is none of theirs?
What power and wisdom knows how to employ, for the performance of
works of so ingenious and intricate a design, instruments so
uncapable to know what they are doing, or to have any notion of it?
Nor does it avail anything to suppose that beasts are endowed with
reason. Let a man suppose them to be as rational as he pleases in
other things, yet he must own, that in generation they have no share
in the art that is conspicuous in the composition of the animals
they produce.

Let us carry t