104 Dr. Drummond on the Equivocal 



form and functions of a worm. Nor further, has any entozoon 

 been found in a semi-state of formation. There is never any- 

 intermediate stage in which it can be shown that the animal 

 is in its transit from an accidental origin to the more perfect 

 state, in which it shall exhibit a complex and independent or- 

 ganization, and like other animals, have organs for the conti- 

 nuation of its species. It would, indeed, require no inconsider- 

 able stretch of imagination to conceive that a portion of ef- 

 fused lymph could assume to itself the power of producing 

 other similar, or rather very dissimilar portions, which would 

 propagate their kind from generation to generation, in scecuta 

 smculorum ; for I incline to the belief that the Tamice and Lum- 

 brici of Hippocrates were as much the progenitors of those 

 found at the present day, as were the men and women of his 

 time the ancestors of those now living in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. 



In considering the formation of any animal, we cannot move 

 a step without reference to an all-powerful architect ; in every 

 structural part, in every function, in every action, in every 

 instinct of such animal, we perceive so great a degree of con- 

 trivance, creative power and wisdom, that the conviction is 

 forced upon us that these cannot be the work of chance, that 

 " there cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, with- 

 out a contriver ; order, without choice ; arrangement, without 

 anything capable of arranging ; subserviency and relation to 

 a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose ; means 

 suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplish- 

 ing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, 

 or the means accommodated to it*/ 5 Yet, in the doctrine of 

 spontaneous generation all these are dispensed with ; we have 

 " contrivance without a contriver, and design without a de- 

 signer," and a number of atoms collected together form them- 

 selves into wonderfully fabricated and sentient beings, inde- 

 pendent of those conditions by which other organized bodies 

 are produced. An insensible mass of matter will, we know, 

 become developed into a living being of most complicated 

 structure and wonderful ceconomy; an egg will be hatched into 

 a peacock, but the egg could never have existed but for its fe- 

 male parent, nor could it ever be hatched into the living bird 

 without having received the permanent vital principle from 

 its male progenitor, in obedience to those laws ordained by 

 the Deity when the first male and female peacock were 

 created ; but the beings of equivocal generation are independ- 

 ent of all such laws ; of the contrivance which they display 



* Paley's Natural Theology. 



