17 



this " chain of vital phenomena." Thus— the vegeta*^ 

 ble functions produce neutral azotised substances, fat- 

 ty substances, sugar, starch, and gum : The animal 

 functions consume them. The vegetable functions 

 decompose carbonic acid, water, and ammoniacal salts, 

 the animal functions produce these; the vegetable 

 functions disengage oxygen, the animal absorb it; the 

 first absorb heat and electricity, the last produce them ; 

 the one is the apparatus of reduction, the other of oxi- 

 dation ; the first is stationary, the other locomotive. — 

 Is it more a draft upon the imagination, to assert that 

 all these things were designed to prepare the earth 

 and its materials for the abode of man, than to con- 

 clude from the appearances of the monuments of Egypt 

 or the sculptured walls of Petrse, that they were the 

 work of human beings in a state of high mechanical 

 improvement I 



II. We have so far traced the physical organiza- 

 tion of nature. We have seen our planet a burning 

 mass cooling gradually, and forming a crust upon its 

 sm'face; we have noticed the first organic formations 

 from the crude plant to the latest form of irrational 

 animal matter. We have seen them produced and 

 perish in their successions, and changed into rocky and 

 mineral substances. Lastly, upon their tombs, we 

 have seen man, an intellectual and moral being, ap- 

 pear. Why does he live; why does he die 1 



Man bears the relation to the moral world that the 

 primitive rocks, the foundations of the earth, bear to 

 physical nature. Both have been gradually develop- 

 ed; both have served, in their turn, the eternal pur- 

 poses of truth and justice. In the one case, we have 

 seen the rocks raised up amidst awful convulsions, on- 



