OF SPECIES 41 



No doubt he would be a bold man, or rather a complete lunatic, 

 who should propose to set limits to the power of the first Author of all 

 things ; but for this very reason no one can venture to deny that 

 this infinite power may have willed what nature herself shows us it 

 has willed. 



This being so, if I find that nature herself works all the wonders 

 just mentioned ; that she has created organisation, life and even 

 feehng, that she has multiplied and diversified within unknown limits 

 the organs and faculties of the organised bodies whose existence she 

 subserves or propagates ; that by the sole instrumentality of needs, 

 establishing and controlHng habits, she has created in animals the 

 fountain of all their acts and all their faculties, from the simplest 

 to instinct, to skill, and finally to reason ; if I find all this, should I 

 not recognise in this power of nature, that is to say in the order of exist- 

 ing things, the execution of the will of her Sublime Author, who was 

 able to will that she should have this power ? 



Shall I admire the greatness of the power of this first cause of every- 

 thing any the less if it has pleased him that things should be so, 

 than if his will by separate acts had occupied itself and still continued 

 to occupy itself with the details of all the special creations, variations, 

 developments, destructions and renewals, in short, with all the muta- 

 tions which take place at large among existing things ? 



Now I hope to prove that nature possesses the necessary powers 

 and faculties for producing herself that so much excite our wonder. 



The objection is still raised however that everything we see in living 

 bodies indicates an unchangeable constancy in the preservation of 

 their form. It is held that all animals whose history has come down 

 to us for two or three thousand years have always been the same, and 

 neither lost nor acquired anything in the perfection of their organs 

 and the shape of their parts. 



Not only had this apparent stabihty passed for an undoubted fact, 

 but an attempt has recently been made to find special proofs of it 

 in a report on the natural history collections brought from Egypt 

 by M. Geoffroy. The authors of the report express themselves as 

 follows : 



" The collection has in the first place this peculiarity, that it may 

 be said to contain animals of all periods. It has long been asked 

 whether species change their shape in the course of time. This 

 question, apparently so futile, is none the less necessary for the history 

 of the world, and consequently for the solution of innumerable other 

 questions which are not foreign to the gravest subjects of human 

 worship. 



" We have never been in so good a position to settle this question, 



