44 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



of its parts to their end and office ; we observe a provision 

 for its nourishment, grow^th, protection, and fecundity ; but 

 we never think of the gardener in all this. We attribute 

 nothing of this to his agency ; yet it may still be true, that 

 without the gardener we should not have had the tulip. 

 Just so it is with the succession of animals, even of the 

 highest order. For the contrivance discovered in the struct- 

 ure of the thing produced, we Want a contriver. The par- 

 ent is not that contriver ; his consciousness decides that ques- 

 tion. He is in total ignorance why that which is produced 

 took its present form rather than any other. It is for him 

 only to be astonished by the effect. We can no more look, 

 therefore, to the intelligence of the parent animal for what 

 we are in search of — a cause of relation and of subserviency 

 of parts to their use, which relation and subserviency we see 

 in the procreated body — than we can refer the internal con- 

 formation of an acorn to the intelligence of the oak from 

 which it dropped, or the structure of the watch to the intel- 

 ligence of the watch which produced it ; there being no 

 difference, as far as argument is concerned, between an ia- 

 telligence which is not exerted, and an intelligence which 

 does not exist. 



