Page 69 - erewhon

or which I cared about losing. At least I fancied so, but I
soon found my mistake.
They got on comfortably at first, though they were much
puzzled with my tobacco-pipe and insisted on seeing me
use it. When I had shown them what I did with it, they were
astonished but not displeased, and seemed to like the smell.
But by and by they came to my watch, which I had hidden
away in the inmost pocket that I had, and had forgotten
when they began their search. They seemed concerned and
uneasy as soon as they got hold of it. They then made me
open it and show the works; and when I had done so they
gave signs of very grave displeasure, which disturbed me all
the more because I could not conceive wherein it could have
offended them.
I remember that when they first found it I had thought
of Paley, and how he tells us that a savage on seeing a watch
would at once conclude that it was designed. True, these
people were not savages, but I none the less felt sure that
this was the conclusion they would arrive at; and I was
thinking what a wonderfully wise man Archbishop Paley
must have been, when I was aroused by a look of horror and
dismay upon the face of the magistrate, a look which con-
veyed to me the impression that he regarded my watch not
as having been designed, but rather as the designer of him-
self and of the universe; or as at any rate one of the great first
causes of all things.
Then it struck me that this view was quite as likely to be
taken as the other by a people who had no experience of
European civilisation, and I was a little piqued with Pal-

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