tangible connexion between the various bodies. There is indeed no machine so complex, or one that tries the human intellect more in educing order from apparent confusion. The real difficulty lies in this, that in dealing with the solar system as a mere machine, we have not the element of life. The fundamental idea of use or design, as employed by Paley, is the adaptation of matter to the necessities of life. A thing is useful in as far as it is adapted to promote some special object in the phenomena of life. A living organism is just a system of means to ends; and every part of the system has its use. This element is wanting in the machinery of the heavens. We cannot discover a use, in this sense, in the arrangements for the stability of the system. No doubt the stability of the arrangement is essential to the welfare of the planetary inhabitants, and this may be called the use or design of the stability; but the real question is, Does the arrangement of the bodies of the solar system manifest no intelligence apart from the existence of life? A savage would, on picking up a watch, discover traces of intelligence in the structure, altogether apart from its use as a whole. He might not know how it was to benefit any being, and yet he would not fail to detect an order and a purpose. He would discover that the maintaining power and the wheels were so adjusted as to produce equable motions in the hands. He might have no conception of the use of such equable motion to any
