270 



PUBPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 

 OF THE ANIMATED CEEATION. 



WE have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and 

 origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the 

 earth, and his relation to supra-mundane things. 



That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence 

 is pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience. 

 Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordi- 

 nary conditions, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being 

 is a system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, 

 and of faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When 

 we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of 

 a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal eco- 

 nomy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high 

 enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play 

 of the mental functions a mind at ease with itself and all 

 around it is extremely agreeable. This negative class of en- 

 joyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more ex- 

 tensively experienced by the lower animals than by man, at 

 least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their 

 mental and bodily functions are much less liable to derange- 

 ment than ours. To find the world constituted on this prin- 

 ciple is only what in reason we should expect. We cannot 

 conceive that so vast a system could have been created for a 

 contrary purpose. No averagely constituted human being 

 would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing 

 a similar system upon an opposite principle. But to form so 

 vast a range of being, and to make being everywhere a source 

 of gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator, in 

 whom we are constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which 

 our own is a faint and far-cast shadow. 



