OF MUSCULAKITY AND ELASTICITY 91 



imperfect principles or wrong conceptions distort 

 and obscure the appearances : false and presump- 

 tuous theories are formed, or we are thrown back 

 in disappointment into scepticism, as if chance 

 only could produce that of which we do not com- 

 prehend the perfect arrangement. But studies 

 better directed, and prosecuted in a better spirit, 

 prove that the human body, though deprived of 

 what gave it sense and motion, is still a plan 

 drawn in perfect wisdom. 



A man possessed of that humility which is akin 

 to true knowledge may be depressed by too ex- 

 tensive a survey of the frame of nature. The 

 stupendous changes which the geologist surveys 

 the incomprehensible magnitude of the hea- 

 venly bodies moving in infinite space, bring down 

 his thoughts to a painful sense of his own little- 

 ness : "To him the earth with men upon it, 

 will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where 

 some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, 

 and some go empty, and all to and fro a little 

 heap of dust." 



He is afraid to think himself an object of 

 Divine care ; but when he regards the structure 

 of his own body, he learns to consider space and 

 magnitude as nothing to a Creator. He finds 

 that the living being, which he was about to con- 

 temn, in comparison with the great system of the 



1 Bacon. 



