THE ARGUMENT APPLIED. 43 



which he makes. Now a cause which bears this relatioii 

 to the efiect, is what we want, in order to account for the 

 suitableness of means to an end — the fitness and fitting ol 

 one thing to another ; and this cause the parent plant cr 

 animal does not supply. 



It is further observable concerning the propagation o.^ 

 plants and animals, that the apparatus employed exhibits 

 no resemblance to the thing produced ; in this respect, hold- 

 ing an analogy with instruments and tools of art. The 

 filaments, antherse, and stigmata of flowers, bear no more 

 resemblance to the young plant, or even to the seed which 

 is formed by their intervention, than a chisel or a plane does 

 to a table or a chair. "What then are the filaments, antherse, 

 and stigmata of plants, but instruments, strictly so called ? 



III. We may advance from animals which bring forth 

 eggs, to animals which bring forth their young alive ; and 

 of this latter class, from the lowest to the highest — from 

 irrational to rational life, from brutes to the human species, 

 without perceiving, as we proceed, any alteration whatever 

 in the terms of the comparison. The rational animal does 

 not produce its offspring with more certainty or success tharn 

 the irrational animal ; a man than a quadruped, a quadru- 

 ped than a bird ; nor — for we may follow the gradation 

 through its whole scale — a bird than a plant ; nor a plant 

 than a watch, a piece of dead mechanism, would do, upon 

 the supposition which has already so often been repeated. 

 Rationality, therefore, has nothing to do in the business. If 

 an account must be given of the contrivance which we ob- 

 serve ; if it be demanded, whence arose either the contriv- 

 ance by which the young animal is produced, or the con- 

 trivance manifested in the young animal itself, it is not from 

 the reason of the parent that any such account can be drawn. 

 He is the cause of his offspring, in the same sense as that in 

 which a gardener is the cause of the tulip which groA\-s upon 

 liis parterre, and in no other. "We admire the ffower ; wo 

 examine the plant ; we perceive the conduciveness of many 



