LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 175 



many disorders as is the humano-animal system ? 

 Should we not speedily have had a repetition of 

 those scenes, in which the North Pole glowed with 

 summer heat 



" Quseque polo posita est glacial! proxima serpens, 

 Frigore pigra prius, nee formidabilis ulli, 

 Incaluit, seiisitque novas fervoribus iras?" 



when the lazy Bootes ran sweating away with his 

 wagon, and the Moon could not but express her 

 astonishment on seeing her brother's curricle and 

 four in the very act of trespassing on her own 

 highway ? should we not have had hot fits and cold 

 fits fevers and agues disordered functions, and 

 diminished secretion ? Would not the Moon occa- 

 sionally have forgotten her function of reflection, 

 and the Sun his secretion of light ? 



By a parity of converse reasoning, had the sy- 

 stem of man been made to rely for its sustentation 

 on some immutable law like that of gravitation 

 had the nutrication of the body been effected by 

 some invariable law over which man possessed no 

 controul had he himself nothing to do with the 

 feeding his body, and had he possessed no power to 

 alter his allotted position and relation in the uni- 

 versein a word, were we fed by chemical affinity, 

 and held in our places by some physical law 



