102 NATURAL THEOLUU-Jf. 



the ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever 

 have been generated by the exercise of the tendon or in the 

 course of that exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon 

 perpendicularly resists the fibre which confines it, and is con- 

 stantly endeavoring, not to form, but to rupture and displace 

 the threads of which the hgament is composed. 



Keill has reckoned up in the human body four hundred 

 and forty-six muscles, dissectible and describable ; and hath 

 assigned a use to every one of the number. This cannot be 

 all imagination. 



Bishop Wilkins has observed from Galen, that there are 

 at least ten several qualifications to be attended to m each 

 partitular muscle : namely, its proper figure ; its just magni- 

 tude ; its fulcrum ; its pomt of action, supposing the figuie 

 to be fixed ; its collocation with respect to its two ends, the 

 upper and the lower ; the place ; the position of the whole 

 muscle ; the introduction into it of nerves, arteries, veins. 

 How are things including so many adjustments to be made; 

 or, when made, how are they to be put together without 

 mtelligence ? 



I have sometimes wondered why we are not struck with 

 mechanism in animal bodies as readily and as strongly as 

 we are struck with it, at first sight, in a watch or a mill. 

 One reason of the difierence may be, that animal bodies are, 

 in a great measure, made up of soft flabby substances, such 

 AS muscles and membranes ; whereas we have been accus- 

 tomed to trace mechanism in sharp Imes, in the configura- 

 tion of hard materials, in the moulding, chiselling, and filing 

 into shapes of such articles as metals or wood. There is 

 something, therefore, of habit in the case ; but it is sufficient- 

 ly evident that there can be no proper reason for any disthic* 

 tion of the sort. Mechanism may be displayed in the one 

 kind of substance as well as in the other. 



Although the few instances we have selectea, even as 

 they stand in our description, are notlmig short perhaps oi 



