216 Natural TJieology. 



its cravings, the good of the body is cared for. It 

 was given to guide men before science could guide 

 them ; and it led them in the right direction as surely 

 before the days of Hunter and Liebig as it does 

 now, with all the light of modern science. 



So this intellectual appetite, that has led men to 

 dig among ruins, to wipe the dust from the ancient 

 inscription, to gather as a pearl every monument 

 of human thought, to scan every form of matter as 

 it exists in nature ; the crystals and the flowers, the 

 animals, from the largest to the animalcules, those 

 now living and those sleeping in their beds of stone, 

 this intellectual appetite, not a thing of develop- 

 ment, and depending upon conditions, but an ori- 

 ginal controlling power, has led men in the right 

 direction. It has led them to labor, though unable 

 to defend themselves from sneers, and unable to 

 frame arguments in favor of what they knew must 

 be right. 



It is this fact in nature, its manifestation of 

 thought, that has enchained so many brilliant in- 

 tellects in its investigations from the days of Aris- 

 totle to the present time. This was the charm 

 that bound them to their work and cheered them in 

 their investigations. The power of this element has 

 never been more fully recognised than in the late 

 work of the great master in zoology, Agassiz, who 

 sums each of his first thirty-three chapters as ex- 

 pressions of the thought of the Creator. 



He does not, like the alchemist, claim that he 

 has made the gold which he holds up to our ad- 



