DESIGN IN THE CREATION OF MAN. Let 
field need his protection. His power is not wanted 
to prevent the increase of noxious animals; for his 
Creator has chosen other and more humble in- 
struments to effect such an ignoble purpose. The 
rapacious tribes of quadrupeds, of birds, and of 
insects, keep their respective classes within due 
limits, while it has been ordained that these animal 
destroyers should propagate slowly and sparingly 
We find, moreover, that, in countries very thinly 
inhabited, there is no disproportion between those 
animals which are predacious, and such as live 
upon vegetables. Man, in short, although the 
noblest work of nature, is yet so unnecessary to her 
operations, and so disconnected with all those designs 
she is carrying on in the material world, that his 
absence from the earth would not be missed. He 
rather impedes than advances the free developement 
of her works. In this point of view he is inferior to 
the very worm he treads upon; the extermination 
of whose race would render the earth unfruitful, and 
bring famine and death upon its inhabitants. It 
may be argued, indeed, that the design of the Creator, 
in calling into existence this last and best of his 
works, was to give him happiness, to fill him with 
delight at the wonders which surrounded him, and 
that he should do good to such of his creatures as 
he was to govern. But had he been created solely 
for those purposes, we should have seen them ac- 
complished ; because imperfection in the means for 
accomplishing the end belongs not to the Omnipotent 
Being. What, in short, do we actually see? Human 
happiness is a shadow. The mass of mankind are 
totally indifferent to the wonders of creation; and 
