and a contriver, but still of a mind purposing something or a purposing mind, is as legitimate as ever. And so there lies enveloped in the watch this consequent-the adaptation of parts for the end but there also lies enveloped there, the adaptation of parts for an end-and the latter we distinctly perceive to be in the music-box as well as in the time-piece. When we look to the latter machine we feel sensible that we never before witnessed the putting forth of intelligence in the adaptation of parts for the end. In this respect there is novelty, because we never before saw a machine made for the performance of tunes. But we at the same time are abundantly sensible, that whether in the example of a watch or of something else, we have a thousand times witnessed the putting forth of intelligence in the adaptation of parts for an end. In this respect there is no novelty; so that whether it be the watch that we have seen made or the music-box that we have not seen made, there is the same firm basis of a sure and multiplied experience on which to rest the conclusion of an Intelligent Maker for both.

25. And thus it is that we do not even require a special experience in watch-making to warrant the application of this argument from final causes either to this or to any other machines whatever. There may be a thousand distinct products of art and wisdom in which our observation has been restricted to the posterior, and has never reached to the prior term of the sequence—that is, where we have seen the product, and never either witnessed the production nor seen the producer—and yet we

have a firm experimental basis on which to rest the inference, that a producer there was, and one too possessed of skill to devise and power to execute. The truth is that we every day of our lives, and perhaps every hour of each day, witness the adaptation of means to an end, in connexion with design and a designer-though never perhaps to the end in any instance of hundreds of distinct machines which could be specified and which therefore, are in this respect to us singular effects. But still each of these machines has in it adaptation to an end, as well as adaptation to the end; has in it therefore that posterior term, of whose connexion with the prior term of an intelligent cause we have had daily observation. It is not, we should remark, on the adaptation to any object quoad the end-but on the adaptation to it quoad an end that the inference is grounded. It is thus that though introduced for the first time to the sight of a watch or a gun-lock or a cotton-mill or a steam-engine, we are as sure of intelligence having been engaged in the execution of each of them as if we had been present a thousand times at their fabrication. The truth is that we have been present many thousand times, though not at the process of formation in either of these individual pieces of mechanism, yet at other processes which have enough in common with the former ones to make an experimental argument in every way as good. We have had lessons every day of our life, by which to read what the characteristics be of those arrangements that indicate a mind acting for a purpose; though not a mind acting for the purpose.

This matters not. The conclusion is as good the one way as the other the valid conclusion, if we will but reflect upon it, not of a subtle but of a sound and substantial process of reasoning.

26. And if we can thus infer the agency of design in a watch-maker, though we never saw a watch made-we can on the very same ground infer the agency of design on the part of a worldmaker, though we never saw a world made. We concede it to our adversaries, that, when reasoning from the posterior term or consequent to the prior term or antecedent of a sequence, both terms must have been seen by us in conjunction on former occasions-else we are not warranted to infer the one from the other of them. We are

aware of the use which they make of this principle. They tell us that we cannot argue from a world to a God-because the world, if an effect, is a singular effect that we have no experience in the making of worlds, as we may have in the making of watches-that had we seen a world made and a God employed about it, then on being presented with another world, we might have inferred the agency of a God in the creation of it and this they contend to be the whole length to which our experience can carry us. But they overlook the

The

distinction between what is essential in the consequent, and what is merely circumstantial therein; and it is here that the whole mistake lies. essential consequent we have seen produced or we have seen in conjunction with its proper antecedent a thousand times-and thus it is, that we should confidently infer a designing artificer from the view

of a watch, though we had just as little experience in the making of watches as we have in the making of worlds. We may never have seen a watch made but in the watch before our eyes, we see the manifest adaptation of means to an end; and this we have frequently before witnessed, as the posterior term of a sequence, in connexion with the forth-putting of sagacity and skill on the part of a purposing mind, as its prior term. We have not seen the whole consequent named a watch produced by the whole antecedent named a watchmaker but we have seen daily and familiarly that which is in the watch, adaptation of means to an end, produced by that which is in the watch-maker, a designing intellect. These two terms we have seen in constant conjunction in thousands of other instances; and we have therefore the warrant of a manifold experience for inferring that they were conjoined in this instance also. We carry the inference no farther than to the skill and power of the artificer. It is this part and this only, that we make the antecedent to the observed consequent before us. We may have never seen a watch

maker in contact with a watch-but we have often seen the effort and skill of a designing mind in contact with the adaptation of useful and subservient means. This has been a frequently observed sequence, from either term of which we may infer the other. Now the consequent of this sequence, the adaptation of useful and subservient means, lies enveloped in the watch; and we infer that the antecedent in this sequence, the effect and skill of a designing mind, lies enveloped in a watch-maker

-so that though we should never have seen a watch made, and never seen a watch-maker employed in the formation of one, though we should never have had this particular experience, yet we have had experience enough to infer from the mechanism thereof the wisdom that presided over the fabrication.

27. In the case of God and the world we have only one term of the sequence before us. We see the world but we have never seen God; and far less have we ever seen Him employed in the formation of a world. We never saw the whole consequent, a world actually emanated and brought forth by the whole antecedent a God. But both in the mechanism of the world, and in the innumerable products wherewith it teems, do we see the adaptation of means to desirable ends and this we have seen emanated and brought forth in many hundreds of instances by a purposing inind as its strict and proper antecedent. It is thus that we hold ourselves to be abundantly schooled, and that too on the basis not of a partial but of a full experience, for the inference of a God. We carry the argument upward from the adaptations in nature to a contriving intellect; just because we have often witnessed similar adaptations, and witnessed them too in conjunction with an antecedent wisdom that planned and that performed them. It is because we have had manifold observation, and observation inclusive of both terms of the sequence, that from the one term in the present instance even the adaptations which nature offers to our view, we infer the other term even a design