as 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 the formation of the machine, he
wants no such intromission or privity. The effect upon the material, the
change produced in it, the utility of the change for future
applications, abundantly testify, be the concealed part of the machine,
or of its construction, what it will, _the hand and agency of a
contriver_."[14]

This is admirably put, but it will apply to the mechanism of animal and
vegetable bodies only, if it is used to show that they too must have had
a contriver who has a hand, or something tantamount to one; who does
act; who, being a contriver, has what all other contrivers must have, if
they are to be called contrivers--a body which can suffer more or less
pain or chagrin if the contrivanc