178 LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 



sary expenditure of energy. This would be like 

 loading a blunderbuss to shoot a sparrow. What 

 would you say to that architect who should em- 

 ploy fifty men for fifty days in erecting a column of 

 stone to support a bird-cage or a pepper-box ? The 

 means, my dear John, which nature employs are 

 always exactly proportioned to the end not an atom 

 too little, not an atom too much. 



If this reasoning be not admitted, then we are 

 driven to the conclusion, that the human system 

 contains within itself, as part of its primitive design, 

 and wholly independent of man's conduct, the 

 principles of disease and premature death. But 

 that SOME individuals do escape both these both 

 disease and premature death the evidence of our 

 senses daily assures us. In these individuals, there- 

 fore, either these principles do not exist, or they 

 exist to no purpose. These principles, therefore, 

 can only form a part of the primitive design of 

 some individual systems ; or, if they do form a part 

 of the original scheme of all, they are clearly only 

 effective in some. But, surely, to suppose this, is to 

 make such a hap-hazard affair of human life is to 

 convert this " harp of a thousand strings" into such 

 an ill-contrived and discordant kettle-drumis to 

 reduce it to a thing of such mere contingency, that 



