PROGRESSIVE SCALE OF BEINGS. 307 



CHAPTER XV. 



OF THE PROGRESSIVE SCALE OR CHAIN OF BEINGS IN THE 

 UNIVERSE. 



To men of observation and reflection it is apparent, that 

 all the beings on this earth, whether animals or vegetables, 

 have a mutual connection and a mutual dependence on each 

 other. There is a graduated scale or chain of existence, not 

 a link of which, however seemingly insignificant, could be 

 broken without affecting the whole. Superficial men, or, 

 which is the same thing, men who avoid the trouble of serious 

 thinking, wonder at the design of producing certain insects 

 and reptiles. But they do not consider that the annihilation 

 of any "one of these species, though some of them are incon- 

 venient, and even noxious to man, would make a blank in 

 nature, and prove destructive to other species, which feed 

 upon them. These, in their turn, would be the cause of 

 destroying other species, and the system of devastation would 

 gradually proceed, till man himself would be extirpated, and 

 leave this earth destitute of all animation. 



In the chain of animals, man is unquestionably the chief 

 or capital link. As a highly-rational animal, improved with 

 science and arts, he is, in some measure, related to beings of 

 a superior order, wherever they exist. By contemplating the 

 works of nature, he even rises to some faint ideas of her great 

 Author. Why, it has been asked, are not men endowed with 

 the capacity and powers of angels ? beings of whom we have 

 not even a conception. With the same propriety it may be 

 asked, Why have not beasts the mental powers of men? 

 Questions of this kind are the results of ignorance, which is 

 always petulant and presumptuous. Every creature is per- 

 fect, according to its destination. Raise or depress any order 

 of beings, the whole system, of course, will be deranged, and 

 a new world would be necessary to contain and support them 

 Particular orders of beings should not be considered sepa- 

 rately, but by the rank they hold in the general system. 

 From man to the minutest animalcule which can be discov- 

 ered by the microscope, the chasm seems to be infinite ; but 

 that chasm is actually filled up with sentient beings, of which 

 the lines of discrimination are almost imperceptible. All of 



