131 



afterwards acquire that form under which they pre- 

 sent themselves to our view. 



We can then form no idea of the primitive state 

 of organized beings : that state which I conceive to 

 be given them by the hand of HIM who has ordained 

 all things from the begin niog. 



The forms of vegetables and animals, which are so 

 elegantly varied, are in the system of this admirable 

 preordination, only the last results of that multitude of 

 successive revolutions they have been liable to, and 

 which perhaps commenced at their first creation. How 

 great would be our astonishment, could we penetrate 

 iii to -these depths and pry into the abyss! We should 

 there discover a world very different from our's, whose 

 sirange decorations wanki in?in;t ly embarrass us. The 

 state in which we conceive all organized bodies to have 

 been at first is the germ state ; and the germ con- 

 tains, in minature, all the parts of the future animal 

 or vegetable; it does not then acquire organs which it 

 had not before ; but those organs which did not 

 hitherto appear, begin now to be visible. We do not 

 know the utmost limits of the division of matter, but 

 we see that it has been divided in a prodigious de- 

 gree : from the elephant to the mite, from the globe 

 of the sun to a globule of light, what an incon- 

 ceivable multitude of intermediate degrees are there!' 

 This animalcule enjoys the light, it penetrates into its 

 eye, it there tracts the image of objects: how ex- 

 tremely minute must this image be! and how muclt 

 more minute must that of a globule of light be, when: 

 several thousands, and perhaps millions, enter at the- 

 same time into this eye ! But great and small are no- 

 thing in themselves, and have no reality but in our ima- 

 gination. It is possible that ail the germs of the same-* 

 kind were originally joined or linked into eadi other,, 

 and that, they are only unfolded from generation to- 

 generation, according to that progression which geonie-- 

 try endeavours to assign them. 



10. A barren fgg has a yolk as well as a- fruitful egg.;. 



