2 An Inquiry respecting 



denominated fixed laws : for what are these but the operations of 

 such agency producing effects for particular ends and purposes, 

 which ends and purposes are evidently intended to be subservient to 

 the application of the powers of the human mind, in the adaptation 

 of all lower things to the purposes suggested by man's reason, in all 

 the various products of the arts and sciences. These rise like a new 

 creation from the comparatively chaotic parts of Nature, and their 

 production is strictly comprehended within the universal plan of the 

 Divine Artificer, who well knows how much to do for man, and 

 what to leave within man's province, for the proper exercise of the 

 faculties with which he endows him ; and to aid him in which 

 exercise, Nature is thus made to unfold a rich and fertile picture 

 of moral and intellectual qualities. 



It would appear that traces of the delineation here alluded to 

 mi<*ht be found throughout the varied products of Nature; but in 

 the animal kingdom we find a broad and certain basis for induction, 

 the world of instinct, in which the various moral and intellec- 

 tual powers of man are symbolically reflected, as in a mirror, 

 even to his entrance into a glorious immortality.* In this great 

 division of the lower creation, the qualities of foresight, industry, 

 integrity, justice and order, sociability and mutual aid and protec- 

 tion, self-devotion and magnanimity, are imaged forth with an 

 astonishing fidelity and touch of truth : and in a manner no less 

 astonishing and faithful are displayed the opposites of all these, — 

 improvidence, idleness, dishonesty, injustice and disorder, unso- 

 ciableness and mutual disregard, selfishness and cowardice. 



To the contemplative mind, final causes natural and moral are 

 every where multiplied to the view, in the innumerable parts of 

 the great machinery of Creation; How "forcibly, in numerous in- 

 stances, are the destroying passions depicted; and how finely 

 does the picture set off the relative beauty of their opposites— the 

 social virtues, which in the instincts of animals are not less faith- 

 fully delineated. 



This circumstance is really so striking, that, (if such an enquiry 

 could be entered into in a philosophical dissertation) we might be 

 tempted to ask, whether these passions of inordinate self-love, 

 * See Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology, vol. i, p. 73, et geq. 





