38 DiscuunsE ON i.NSTixcr. 



we inquire, the more we perceive that all investigation only places in a 

 stronger light the conclusion from the facts to a superintending intel- 

 ligence. 



"Beyond all doubt it is so. The whole question is one of relations 

 and connexions. Adaptation, adjustment, mutual dependence of parts, 

 conformity of arrangement, balance, and compensation, every where ap- 

 pear pervading the whole system, and conspicuous in all its parts. It 

 signifies not in this view whether we regard instinct as the result of the 

 animal's faculties actuated by the impressions of his senses ; or as the 

 faint glimmerings of Intelligence working by the same rules which guide 

 the operations of more developed reason ; or as a peculiar faculty differ- 

 ing in kind from those with which man is endowed, or as the immediate 

 and direct operation of the Great Mind vvhich created and which up- 

 holds the universe. If the last be the true theory, then wc have addi- 

 tional reason for devoutly admiring the spectacle which this department 

 of the creation hourly offers to the contemplative mind. But the same 

 conclusion of a present and pervading Intelligence flows from all the 

 other doctrines and equally flows from them all. If the senses so move 

 the animal's mind as to produce the perfect result which we witness, 

 those senses have been framed and that mind has been constituted, in 

 strict harmony with each other, and their combined and mutual action 

 has been adjusted to the regular performance of the work spread out be- 

 fore our eyes, the subject of just wonder. If it is reason like our own, 

 which moves the animal mechanism, its modification to suit that physi- 

 cal structure and to work those effects which we are unable to accom- 

 plish, commands again our humble admiration, while the excellence of 

 the workmanship performed by so mean an agent impresses us with 

 ideas yet more awful of the Being who formed and who taught it. If to 

 the bodily structure of these creatures there has been given a mind 

 wholly diflerent from our own, yet it has been most nicely adapted to 

 its material abode, and to the corporeal tools wherewith it works ; so 

 that while a new variety strikes us in the infinite resources of creative 

 skill, our admiration is still raised as before by the manifestation of con- 

 trivance and of expcrtness which every where speaks of the governing 

 power-, the directing skill, the plastic hand. Nor is there upon any of 

 these hypotheses room for doubting the identity of the Great Artificer of 

 Nature. The same peculiarity every where is seen to mark the whole 

 woi-kmanship. All comes from a superior iirtelligence; that intelligence, 

 though variously diversified, preserves its characteristic features, and 

 ever shines another and the same." 



