Now, putting aside for the moment all other considerations, and accepting the illustration, surely the example demonstrates rather the unreasonableness of the _objector himself_! It is true, indeed, that a man is an organism indefinitely more complex and perfect than any watch; but if the watch could only conceive of its maker in watch terms, or else in terms altogether inferior, the watch would plainly be right in speaking of its maker as a, to it, inconceivably {250} perfect kind of watch, acknowledging at the same time, that this, its conception of him, was _utterly inadequate_, although the best its inferior nature allowed it to form.

For if, instead of so conceiving of its maker, it refused to make use of these relative perfections as a makeshift, and so necessarily thought of him as amorphous metal, or mere oil, or by the help of any other inferior conception which a watch might be imagined capable of entertaining, that watch would he wrong indeed.

For man can much more properly be compared with, and has much more affinity to, a perfect watch in full activity than to a mere piece of metal, or drop of oil.

But the watch is even more in the right still, for its maker, man, virtually _has_ the cogged wheels, springs, escapements, oil, &c., which the watch's conception has been supposed to attribute to him; inasmuch as all these parts must have existed as distinct ideas in the human watchmaker's mind before he could actually construct the clock formed by him.

Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch _thinks_.