Chap. I. RELATIONS OF INDIVIDUALS. 63 



as tlie preliminary step in tiie existence not only of all organized beings, bnt of 

 every thing in nature, how natural to find tliat while diversity is introduced in the 

 plan, in the complication and the details of structure of animals, their relations to 

 the surrounding media are equally diversified, and consequently the same functions 

 may be performed by the most different apparatus ! 



SECTION XVII. 



RELATIONS OF INBIVIDUALS TO ONE ANOTHER. 



The relations in which individuals of the same species of animals stand to one 

 another are not less determined and fixed than the relations of species to the sui'- 

 rounding elements, which we have thus far considered. The relations which individ- 

 ual animals bear to one another are of such a character, that they ought long ago 

 to have been considered as proof sufficient that no organized bemg could ever have 

 been called into existence by another agency than the direct intervention of a 

 reflective mind. It is in a measure conceivable that physical agents might pro- 

 duce something like the body of the lowest kinds of animals or plants, and that 

 under identical circumstances the same thing may have been produced again and 

 again, by the repetition of the same process ; but that vipon closer analysis of the 

 possil)ilities of the case, it should not have at once appeared how incongruous the 

 further supposition is, that such agencies could delegate the power of reproducing 

 what they had just called into existence, to those very being.s, with such limitations, 

 that they could never reproduce any thing but themselves, I am at a loss to under- 

 stand. It will no more do to suppose that from simpler structures such a pro- 

 cess may end in the production of the most perfect, as every step implies an 

 addition of possil)ilities not even included in the original ca.se. Such a delegation of 

 power can only lie an act of intelligence ; while between the production of an 

 indefinite number of organized being.s, as the result of a physical law, and the repro- 

 duction of these same organized beings by themselves, there is no necessary connec- 

 tion. The successive generations of any animal or plant cannot stand, as far as 

 their origin is concerned, in any causal relation to physical agents, if these agents 

 have not the power of delegating their own action to the I'liU extent to wliicli they 

 have alre;idy been productive in the iirst appearance of the.se beings; for it is a 

 physical law tiiat the resultant is equal to the Ibrces applied. If any new being 

 has ever been produced by such agencies, how could the successive generations 

 enter, at the time of their liirth. into tlie same relations to these agents, as their 



