f 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 h