4? NATUEAL THEOLOTtY. 



action, effect, and use, to his counsel, intelligence, and work 

 mansliip. In producing it by the intervention of a formei 

 watch, he was only working by one set of tools instead of 

 another. So it is with the plant, and the seed produced by 

 it. Can any distinction be assigned between the two cases ; 

 between the producing watch and the producing plant ; both 

 passive unconscious substances — both, by the organization 

 which was given to them, producing their hke without un- 

 derstanding or design — both, that is, instruments ? 



11. From plants we may proceed to oviparous animals— 

 from seeds to eggs. Now I say, that the bird has the same 

 concern in the formation of the egg which she lays, as the 

 plant has in that of the seed which it drops ; and no other 

 nor greater. The internal constitution of the egg is as much 

 a secret to the hen as if the hen were inanimate. Her will 

 camiot alter it, or change a single feather of the chick. She 

 can neither foresee nor determine of which sex her brood 

 shall be, or how many of either ; yet the thing produced 

 shall be, from the first, very different in its make, according 

 to the sex which it bears. So far, therefore, from adapting 

 the means, she is not beforehand apprized of the effect. If 

 there be concealed within that smooth shell a provision and 

 a preparation for the production and nourishment of a new 

 animal, they are not of her providing or preparing ; if there 

 be contrivance, it is none of hers. Although, therefore, there 

 be the difference of life and perceptivity betv/een the animal 

 and the plant, it is a difference which enters not into the 

 account : it is a foreign circumstance ; it is a difference of 

 properties not employed. The animal function and the veg- 

 etable function are alike destitute of any design which can 

 operate upon the form of the thing produced. The plant 

 has no design in producing the seed — no comprehension of 

 the nature or use of what it produces : the bird, with respect 

 to its egg, is not above the plant with respect to its seed. 

 Neither the one nor the other bears that sort of relation to 

 what proceeds from them wliich a joiner does to the chair 



