William Paley — Natural Theology, ch. 1 — the watch upon the heath

“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 … But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground … when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer: who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.”

Checked word-for-word against Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity · 2026-07-18

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