Yet Paley's deference to the popular understanding gave rise to the first general misapprehension of his treatise. He sets out from a kind of surprise--the surprise his readers would feel at finding a watch upon a heath. Now this feeling was immediately alleged as a conclusive objection against Paley's comparison, and as a ground for distrusting the whole argument founded upon it. The world, it was said, cannot be likened to a watch, nor yet to any other sort of mechanism. Between things natural, and the things which men make, the difference is not a mere contrast of perfection with imperfection. The real reason why we are surprised to see Paley's watch lying on a moor--and not at all surprised to see Paley's stone lying beside it--springs from this very difference. And though the history of a stone, common, coarse, and worthless, is really more wonderful than the history of any watch, and though the stone has an infinitely longer pedigree, we should never speak or think of it in the same way. We feel that the objects are dissimilar, and our surprise testifies the fact. A heath is given up to nature, a watchmaker's shop to art. The watch is out of place among stones, the stone among watches. The idea raised at the outset, therefore, is that Art and Nature would seem to be thoroughly unlike. At a first view of the subject, these remarks appear open to one obvious rejoinder. The sort of surprised feeling which Paley describes, is not in itself a proof of real unlikeness. A weed is a plant out of place; we do not expect thriving crops of cabbage or teazle in a carefully kept rose-garden, nor gooseberry bushes amongst azaleas. The proudest flower that blossoms is a weed in a vineyard, in a plot of opium-poppies, or mixed with other herbs medicinal. So, too, a rough diamond would not be out of place in a watchmaker's shop; but if we saw a stone of no selling value inside a case of watches we should certainly experience some surprise. And the feeling would remain even though we were quite unable to explain how the poor pebble differed chemically from the priceless gem. We know that the latter would appear to a jeweller's customers like a rose among flowers, but the former worthless as a weed. The jeweller would consider it a trespasser fit only to be turned out of doors. But does this rejoinder satisfactorily dispose of the difficulty? Is not the true reason why we might observe with some wonder a watch lying upon a moor resolvable into the fact of our knowing its use and being quite sure that some one had dropped it there?[k] A savage might not feel in the least surprised, unless, indeed, he happened to suppose that the watch was a kind of animal he had never seen before, and took notice of the singular sound it made. In this event he would probably break it to pieces without discovering the purpose or mode of its contrivance.