The Works of William Paley: With a Life of the Author, Volume 1

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Thomas Tegg, 1825
 

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Page 336 - If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes...
Page 14 - As far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are made upon the same principles ; both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated.
Page 2 - ... a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.
Page 13 - What effect would this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference ? What, as hath already been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our admiration of the skill, which had been employed in the formation of such a machine ? Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round to an opposite conclusion, viz. that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the business, although all other evidences of art and skill remain as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art...
Page 8 - ... is ground. But the effect results from the arrangement. The force of the stream cannot be said to be the cause or author of the effect, still less of the arrangement. Understanding and plan in the formation of the mill were not the less necessary, for any share which the water has in grinding the corn ; yet is this share the same as that which the watch would have contributed to the production of the new watch, upon the supposition assumed in the last section.
Page 278 - MY opinion of Astronomy has always been, that it is not the best medium through which to prove the agency of an intelligent Creator ; but that, this being proved, it shows beyond all other sciences, the magnificence of his operations.
Page 337 - A child, without knowing anything of the use of language, is in a high degree delighted with being able to speak. Its incessant repetition of a few articulate sounds, or perhaps of the single word which it has learnt to pronounce, proves this point clearly.
Page 1 - IN crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there ; I might possibly answer that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever : nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer.
Page 12 - The conclusion which the first examination of the watch, of its works, construction, and movement suggested, was, that it must have had, for the cause and author of that construction, an artificer, who understood its mechanism, and designed its use. This conclusion is invincible.

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