32 ON THE SUCCESSION OF 



tion are alike destitute of any design which can operate up- 

 on the form of the thing produced. The plant has no de- 

 sign in producing the seed, no comprehension of tiie na- 

 ture or use of what it produces : the bird with respect to its 

 egg, is not above the plant with respect to its seed. Neith- 

 er the one nor the other bears that sort of relation to wltat 

 proceeds from them, which a joiner does to the chair w hich 

 he makes. Now a cause, which bears this relation to the 

 effect, is what we want, in order to account for the suita- 

 bleness of means to an end, the fitness and fitting of one 

 thing to another : and this cause the parent plant or ani- 

 mal does not suppl}'. 



It is further observable, concerning the propagation of 

 plants and animals, that the apparatus employed exhibits 

 no resemblance to the thing produced ; in this respect 

 holding an analogy with instrument? and tools of art. The 

 filaments, antherae, and stiamata of fiiowers bear no more 

 resemblance to the young plant, or even to the seed, which 

 is formed by their inter v^ention, than a chisel or a plane 

 does to a table or a chair. What then are the filaments, 

 antherae, and stigmata of plants, but instruments, strictly 

 so calle;! ?* 



Ill We may advance from animals which bring forth 

 eggs, to animals which bring forth their young alive ; and., 

 of this latter case, from the lowest to the highest : from 



" Nearly akin to the reproduction of plants and animak by genera- 

 tion, is the reproduction of parts of animal bodie-; which have been 

 destroyed, and the reparation of those which have been injured. To 

 say nothing of the reproduction of limbs in crustaceou^ animals, the 

 wonderful but well attested fact, of the formation of a new eye in an 

 animal of the lizard kind, in the place of one, which had been cut out 

 of the socket, is one which no atheistical theory can approach, in the 

 way of explanation. In the process by which a new eye is formed^ 

 the apparatus, instruments and materials, employed, bear no resem- 

 blance to the organ to be formed. The small capillary vessels ot the 

 root of the eye, construct anew eye, out of the blood which circulates 

 in them. To use a mode of expression like that of our author — the 

 vessels which thus construct a new eye, bea:- no more resemblance to 

 it, than a chisel or a plane, to a table or a chair ; and the blood out of 

 which it is made, no more resemblance to it when made, than the 

 metallic ores when taken out of the mine, to a complete and perfectly 

 constructed watch. In this ca>je, we find a contrivance existing in a 

 whole race of animals, for the accomplishment of a purpose which it is 

 not called upon to accomplish in one instance out of a thousand. If 

 the reader will examine the several atheistical modes of evading the 

 force of the arguments for the existence of God, referred to in the 

 next Chapter, as well as in various other parts of this volume, he will 

 lind that they signally fail in their application to this case. Ed. 



