192 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



SECTION XXXI. 



COMBINATIONS IN TIME AND SPACE OF VARIOUS KINDS OF 

 RELATIONS AMONG ANIMALS. 



It must occur to every reflecting mind, that the mutual 

 relation and respective parallelism of so many structural, 

 embryonic, geological, and geographical characteristics of 

 the animal kingdom, are the most conclusive proof that 

 they were ordained by a reflective mind, while they pre- 

 sent at the same time the side of nature most accessible 

 to our intelligence, when seeking to penetrate the relations 

 between finite beings and the cause of their existence. 



The phenomena of the inorganic world are all simple, 

 when compared to those of the organic world. There is 

 not one of the great physical agents, electricity, mag- 

 netism, heat, light, or chemical affinity, which exhibits, 

 in its sphere, phenomena so complicated as the simplest 

 organized beings ; and we need not look for the highest 

 among the latter to find them presenting the same phy- 

 sical phenomena as are manifested in the material world, 

 besides those which are exclusively peculiar to them. 

 When, then, organized beings include everything the 

 material world contains, and a great deal more that is 

 peculiarly their own, how could they be produced by 

 physical causes, and how can the physicists, acquainted 

 with the laws of the material world, and who acknowledge 

 that these laws must have been established at the begin- 

 ning, overlook that a fortiori the more complicated laws 

 which regulate the organic world, of the existence of which 

 there is no trace for a long period upon the surface of the 

 earth, must have been established, later and successively, 

 at the time of the creation of the successive types of ani- 

 mals and plants ? 



