MAN AND NATURE. 295 



the inferior creatures which surround him. While 

 ruling in the animal world, he is at the same time de- 

 pendent upon it not for food and clothing only, for 

 labour and for transport, but in a thousand other ways 

 for the necessities, conveniences, and luxuries of life. 

 It is needless to illustrate by details a matter so familiar, 

 yet seldom perhaps understood to its full extent. Taking 

 singly the objects which are around us in our own 

 homes, we find few that have not been the product of 

 living nature before being fashioned to human purposes. 

 The original organisation is sometimes preserved, often 

 changed by art ; but still it is the dependence of Man 

 upon organised existence without. Civilised life is 

 mainly contrasted with savage, in the larger and more 

 skilful appropriation of all that the living world offers 

 to our use. 



This large ministration of other parts of the crea- 

 tion to Man gives us no proof whatever that they were 

 created in sole reference to him. It is impossible to 

 regard the multitudinous forms of life animal and 

 vegetable, fossil or existing which by no inference can 

 be brought into connexion with the human being, 

 without the conviction that some other great purposes 

 have been intended and fulfilled in this wide and diver- 

 sified creation. We cannot reach, or even approach, 

 these purposes by our reason ; but this inability in no 

 wise impairs the force of the conclusion. Whether the 

 production of life in its various forms and successions 

 has been by operation of more general laws, or by 

 special and repeated acts of creation, equally is there 

 manifest and wonderful design in the whole ; and de- 



