OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 203 



(215.) This, we may say, is too complex ; it is 

 artificial, and cannot be granted : yet, if the ad- 

 mission of this or any other structure tenfold more 

 artificial and complicated will enable any one to 

 present in a general point of view a great number 

 of particular facts, to make them a part of one 

 system, and enable us to reason from the known 

 to the unknown, and actually to predict facts before 

 trial, we would ask, why should it not be granted? 

 When we examine those instances of nature's work- 

 manship which we can take to pieces and under- 

 stand, we find them in the highest degree artificial 

 in our own sense of the word. Take, for example, 

 the structure of an eye, or of the skeleton of an 

 animal, what complexity arid what artifice! In 

 the one, a pellucid muscle; a lens formed with ellip- 

 tical surfaces ; a circular aperture capable of en- 

 largement or contraction without loss of form. In 

 the other, a framework of the most curious car- 

 pentry ; in which occurs not a single straight line, 

 nor any known geometrical curve, yet all evidently 

 systematic, and constructed by rules which defy our 

 research. Or examine a crystallized mineral, which 

 we can in some measure dissect, and thus obtain 

 direct evidence of an internal structure. Neither 

 artifice nor complication are here wanting ; and 

 though it is easy to assert that these appearances 

 are, after all, produced by. something which would 

 be very simple, if we did but know it, it is plain 

 that the same might be said of a steam-engine ex- 

 ecuting the most complicated movements, previous 

 to any investigation of its nature, or any knowledge 

 of the source of its power. 



