explain that the watch was "nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic nature." "It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the efficient operative cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent, for it is only the mode according to which our agent proceeds: it implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing."

From the watch we are led on to the eye, which exhibits a skill of design not less, but far greater, than that of the man who gave us the telescope. Then follows a detailed examination of the use of the various bodily organs, the contrivances to be met with in vegetables and animals, the marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an intelligent Author of Nature.

That these arrangements had been expressly intended to meet the circumstances of each particular case was assumed as necessarily involved in the acceptance of any design at all. It is interesting to observe that Paley did not think it improbable that the Deity may have committed to another being—"nay, there may be many such agents and many ranks of them"—the task of "drawing forth" special creations out of the materials He had made and in subordination to His rules. This, he thought, might in some degree account for the fact that contrivances are not always perfected at once, and that many instruments and methods are employed.

Of the goodness of the Creator no manner of doubt was entertained. For proof of it attention was called to the fact that "in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial," and to the further fact that "the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purposes or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the function of pain." Venomous animals there were, no doubt, but the fang and the sting "may be no less merciful to the victim, than salutary to the devourer"; and it was to be noted "that whilst only a few species possess the venomous property, that property guards the whole tribe." Then again, before we condemn the ordering whereby animals devour one another we must consider what would happen if they did not. "Is it to see the world filled with drooping, superannuated, half-starved, helpless and unhelped animals, that you would alter the present system of pursuit and prey?" "A hare, notwithstanding the number of its dangers and its enemies, is as playful an animal as any other." "It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. 'The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties.... The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them." Where it might have been imagined that there were to be seen miscarriages of the Creator's intentions, these were to be attributed to the presence and influence of mysterious forces of evil. Such attempts to hinder or frustrate the workings of good might be part of a purpose of good because they only afforded fresh opportunities for a display of the Divine wisdom, whose ordinary interventions were accepted as Providences, whilst Miracles supplied the rarer exhibitions of its power.

For the rest, it was our duty to remember that such difficulties as might still be felt must be largely the result of our ignorance. With patience we should learn to know more. A day was coming when much that is now hidden would be made clear, and when the greatness and wisdom and justice of the Almighty Ruler would be wonderfully and fearfully revealed.

It is not intended to suggest that there were no dissentients ready to bring forward objections to these almost unanimously accepted doctrines. We know that there were such, if only because it was deemed worth while to argue against them. Kepler and Newton had stirred men's minds by their account of the prodigious scale upon which the mechanism of the Universe was constructed, and Laplace had already enunciated the theory according to which the cosmic bodies were originally formed in obedience to the law of gravitation by the condensation of rotating nebulous spheres. And there were those who used these discoveries of astronomy to cast doubts upon the likelihood that the Divine attention would be concentrated upon the concerns of so tiny a speck as this planet of ours. There were others who maintained that the unbroken persistency of the order of Nature was evidence enough to shew that it had no beginning and could have no end.

Against both these objectors the irony and the oratory of a Chalmers was directed with what was held to be overwhelming effect. If the telescope had shewn us wonderful things, there was another instrument, he said, which had been given to us about the same time. If by the telescope we had been led to see "a system in every star," it was no less true that the microscope had disclosed "a world in every atom," thus proving to us that "no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice of the human eye, is beneath the notice of His regard."

So again, in an oration upon "The constancy of Nature," the thesis is most eloquently defended that "the strict order of the goodly universe which we inhabit" is nothing else than "a noble attestation to the wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect."[3]

Little did men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries that was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems; or of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity and an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the patience of the defenders of the old beliefs.

It is of the new facts disclosed and of the further thoughts suggested by them that we must next proceed to tell.

[1] Summa, I., ii. 3.

[2] Essay on "Atheism and Superstition."

[3] Astronomical Discourses (1817), pp. 80, 211.

CHAPTER II