first cast of the eye, or first
sight, and without reasoning. It is the same with the bare prospect
of the universe. A man may by vain, long-winded, preposterous
reasonings confound his own reason and obscure the clearest notions:
but the single cast of the eye is decisive. Such a work as the
world is never makes itself of its own accord. There is more art
and proportion in the bones, tendons, veins, arteries, nerves, and
muscles, that compose man's body, than in all the architecture of
the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The single eye of the least of
living creatures surpasses the mechanics of all the most skilful
artificers. If a man should find a watch in the sands of Africa, he
would never have the assurance seriously to affirm, that chance
formed it in that wild place; and yet some men do not blush to say
that the bodies of animals, to the artful framing of which no watch
can ever be compared, are the effects of the caprices of chance.

SECT. LXXIV. Another Objection of the Epicureans drawn from the
Eternal Motion of Atoms.

I am not ignorant of a reasoning which the Epicureans may frame into
an objection. "The atoms will, they say, have an eternal motion;
their fortuitous concourse must, in that eternity, have already
produced infinite combinations. Who says infinite, says what
comprehends all without exception. Amongst these infinite
combinations of atoms which have already happened successively, all
such as are possible must necessarily be found: for if there were
but one possible combination, beyond those contained in that
infinite, it would cease to be a true infinite, because something
might be added to it; and whatever may be increased, being limited
on the side it may receive an addition, is not truly infinite.
Hence it follows that the combination of atoms, which makes up the
present system of the world, is one of the combinations which the
atoms have had successively: which being laid as a principle, is it
matter of wonder that the world is as it is now? It must have taken
this exact form, somewhat sooner, or somewhat later, for in some one
of these infinite changes it must, at last, have received that
combination that makes it now appear so regular; since it must have
had, by turns, all combinations that can be conceived. All systems
are comprehended in the total of eternity. There is none but the
concourse of atoms, forms, and embraces, sooner or later. In that
infinite variety o