FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF ANIMALS 127 



while he may marvel at the fact, take it as a warning for himself with 

 reference to his boasted and yet legitimate independence. All rela- 

 tions in nature are regulated by a superior wisdom. May we only 

 learn in the end to conform, within the limits of our own sphere, to 

 the laws assigned to each race! 



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, geo- 

 logical, and geographical characteristics of the animal kingdom are 

 the most conclusive proof that they were ordained by a reflective 

 mind, while they present at the same time the side of nature most 

 accessible to our intelligence, when seeking to penetrate the relations 

 between finite beings and th cause of their existence. 



The phenomena of the inorganic world are all simple, when com- 

 pared to those of the organic world. There is not one of the great 

 physical agents, electricity, magnetism, heat, light, or chemical 

 affinity, which exhibits in its sphere as complicated phenomena as 

 the simplest organized beings; and we need not look for the highest 

 among the latter to find them presenting the same physical phe- 

 nomena 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 estab- 

 lished at the beginning, overlook that a fortiori the more compli- 

 cated 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 animals and plants? 



Thus far we have been considering chiefly the contrasts existing 

 between the organic and inorganic worlds. At this stage of our in- 

 vestigation it may not be out of place to take a glance at some of 

 the coincidences which may be traced between them, especially as 

 they afford direct evidence that the physical world has been ordained 



