OF THE PERSONALITY OP THE DEITY. 24S 



intelligence, will, or direction, (for I do not find that any of 

 these qualities are ascribed to them,) has produced the 

 living forms which we now see. 



Very few of the conjectures, which philosophers hazard 

 upon these subjects, have more of pretension in them, than 

 the challenging you to show the direct impossibility of the 

 hypothesis. In the present example, there seemed to be 

 a positive objection to the whole scheme upon the very 

 face of it; vv^hich was, that if the case were as here repre- 

 sented, new combinations ought to be perpetually taking 

 place ; new plants and animals, or organized bodies which 

 were neither, ought to be starting up before our eyes every 

 day. For this, however, our philosopher has an answer. 

 Whilst so many forms of plants and animals are already in 

 existence, and, consequently, so many " internal moulds," 

 as he calls them, are prepared and at hand, the organic 

 particles run into these molds, and are employed in supply- 

 ing an accession of substance to them, as well for their 

 growth, as for their propagation. By which means things 

 keep their ancient course. But, says the same philosopher, 

 should any general loss or destruction of the present con- 

 stitution of organized bodies take place, the particles, for 

 want of '' moulds" into which they might enter, would run 

 into different combinations, and replenish the waste with 

 new species of organized substances. 



Is there any history to countenance this notion ? Is it 

 known, that any destruction has been so repaired? any 

 desert thus repeopled ? 



So far as I remember, the only natural appearance men- 

 tioned by our author, by way of fact whereon to build his 

 hypothesis, the only support on which it rests, is the forma- 

 tion of icoinns in the intestines of animals, which is here 

 ascribed to the coalition of superabundant organic particles, 

 floating about in the first passages ; and which have com- 

 bined themselves into these simple animal forms, for want 

 of internal moulds, or of vacancies in those moulds, into 

 which they might be received. The thing referred to is 

 rather a species of facts, than a single fact ; as some other 

 cases may, with equal reason, be included under it. But 

 to make it a fact at all, or in any sort applicable to the 

 question, we must begin with asserting an equivocal g^uex- 

 ation contrary to analogy, and without necessity : contrary 

 to an analogy, which accompanies us to the very limits of our 

 knowledge or inquiries, for wherever, either in plants or 

 aTiimals, we are able to examine the subject, we find pro- 



