116 



part of our experience), I am disposed to impute very little of the 

 variety of animal forms to the casualties of sexual intercourse and 

 to the peculiarities of nutrition ; for, in the first, we find that the 

 offspring of these casualties of intercourse are incapable of perpetu- 

 ating their kind (this at least holds good generally of the varieties of 

 species), and, with regard to the second, we are assured by experience 

 from the earliest recorded time to the present, that animals and 

 vegetables have preserved characteristic marks of their primitive 

 identity. This is a strong tendency in nature: it is exemplified in 

 the results of grafting, in the varieties of animal and vegetable forms 

 which aie preserved respectively under common means of nutrition, 

 &c. ; at tiie same time it is not to be expected, as will hereafter be 

 more fully remarked, but that the means of nutrition may to a cer- 

 tain extent modify or influence the form of life, these two constituting 

 a relation. And some strange products may occasionally result 

 from a commerce which may be said to be unnatural between 

 animals; of which products there may now exist some solitary 

 remains : the Marnoth however is not to be reckoned of this number 

 since its remains prove it to have been largtr than any known 

 animal; whereas if it were a product of the above description, it 

 would be less than the largest known animal, partaking in this 

 respect of the difference of properties between the parents. It is 

 to be inferred for this reason (if the specimens are not artificial and 

 the accounts fabulous) that this animal at least belonged to a race 

 which, owing to some of the causes before enumerated, has become 

 extinct. 



41. Having once come to a conclusion of an origin of man by 

 constitution, whether called a creation or however denominated, in 

 conformity with our principles of causation, we are compelled to 

 make the following acknowledgment, viz. 



That at a remote period of the world the constituents in it from 

 which such an organic spirit as that we are considering would result 

 as an effect, were disposed to unite and produce as a separate com- 

 bination in nature the spirit in question. The concurrence of con- 

 stituents at this period was determined by one of two modes of 

 causation, or by both, viz. the constituents previously disguised in 

 another constitution, were suffered to form the identical spirit by an 

 agency which detached them from their former alliances; or by an 

 agency which furnished additional properties to constituents which 

 were not otherwise identical; these agree with the only possible modes 

 of causation, by subtraction or by addition of properties, or both. 



42. After all, we are, by candour and a just regard to truth, 

 obliged to confess, that the most plausible conjectures on this remote 

 business of the origin of vital forms by constitution are, in their ap- 

 plication to particular processes, to be very scrupulously received. 



