“There I cannot go with you, sir,” said Richard, who, for all the impression Barbara had made upon him, had not yet thought of the world as in any sense alive; it was to him but an aggregate of laws and results, the great dissecting-room of creation, the happy hunting ground of the goddess who calls herself Science, though she can claim to understand as yet no single fact. “Why?” asked Wingfold. “Because I cannot receive the simile at all. I cannot allow expression of thought where no thought is.” Here a certain look on the face of the young workman helped the parson toward understanding the position he meant to take, “Ah!” he answered, “I see I mistook you! I understand now! Sleep she or wake she, you will not allow thought on the face of Nature! Am I right?” “That is what I would say, sir,” answered Richard. “We must look at that!” returned Wingfold. “That would be scanned!--You would conceive the world as a sort of machine that goes for certain purposes--like a clock, for instance, whose duty it is to tell the time of the day?--Do I represent you truly?” “So far, sir. Only one machine may have many uses!” “True! A clock may do more for us than tell the time! It may tell how fast it is going, and wake solemn thought. But if you came upon a machine that constantly waked in you--not thoughts only, but the most delicate and indescribable feelings--what would you say then? Would you allow thought there?” “Surely not that the machine was thinking!” “Certainly not. But would you allow thought concerned in it? Would you allow that thought must have preceded and occasioned its existence? Would you allow that thought therefore must yet be interested in its power to produce thought, and might, if it chose, minister to the continuance or enlargement of the power it had originated?” “Perhaps I should be compelled to allow that much in regard to a clock even!--Are we coming to the Paley-argument, sir?” said Richard. “I think not,” answered Wingfold. “My argument seems to me one of my own. It is not drawn from design but from operation: where a thing wakes thought and feeling, I say, must not thought and feeling be somewhere concerned in its origin?” “Might not the thought and feeling come by association, as in the case of the clock suggesting the flight of time?”