THE HORSE IN MOTION. ig 



the highest bear to the locomotive apparatus or machinery of the horse, 

 with its compound system of levers, pulleys, tendons, springs, and mus- 

 cular powers, and. that marvellous ingenuity in arrangement to produce 

 results which man has not been able to understand until now, and all 

 set in motion through telegraphic communication distributed to every 

 muscular fibre, and the whole of this complicated system of organs 

 co-ordinated and controlled by one central will ? Another incompre- 

 hensible mystery of life is, that this complicated machine should pos- 

 sess the power, not only to preserve and protect itself through a long 

 life, but of reproducing from generation to generation indefinitely, 

 and transmitting to posterity its own peculiarities of form and mental 

 qualities ! 



Does the whole organic world furnish no proofs of intelligence and 

 design, that we must be told that all these marvellous manifestations of 

 both are but the inherent properties of matter, 



" And that were true which nature never told "? 



If it were an " attainment and an aim " to escape moral responsibility 

 by getting rid of a creator, do we approach any nearer the solution 

 of the question of the origin of life by removing it farther off into the 

 mytho-geologic eras ? Or is the difficulty in any way diminished by 

 attributing to matter all the high intellectual functions that have been 

 by unschooled people in all ages ascribed to supernatural powers ? 



Can the microscopist, when he discovers vibriones in a vegetable 

 infusion, or protoplasm in a drop of serum, be excusable for running 

 naked, like the philosopher of Syracuse, through the streets, shouting 

 " Eureka " ? Can one who finds a shingle or a brick claim that he has 

 discovered the cause of a house ? Let him account for the origin of the 

 brick and the shingle ! 



Because a fossil skeleton of a four-toed horse, which failed to con- 

 nect his species with our time, has been found in the fossiliferous 

 deposits of the interior of this continent, does it follow that our noble 

 soliped had an origin less remote and independent, or that he found 

 it necessary and practicable to concentrate his four toes into one, or 

 succumb to the altered conditions of his life ? 



