274 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



eooiiom?, wisdom, and design ; because the property it&eli 

 assumes diA^ersities, and submits to deviations dictated by 

 intelligible utilities, and serving distinct purposes of animal 

 happiness. 



The opinion which would consider " generation " as a 

 'princiiile in nature, and which would assign this principle 

 as the cause, or endeavor to satisfy our minds with such a 

 cause of the existence of organized bodies, is confuted, in my 

 judgment, not only by every mark of contrivance discover- 

 able in those bodies, for which it gives us no contriver, offers 

 no account whatever, but also by the further consideration, 

 that things generated possess a clear relation to things not 

 generated. If it were merely one part of a generated body 

 bearing a relation to another part of the same body, as the 

 mouth of an animal to the throat, the throat to the stomach, 

 the stomach to the intestines, those to the recruiting of the 

 blood, and, by means of the blood, to the nourishment of the 

 whole frame ; or if it were only one generated body bearing 

 a relation to another generated body, as the sexes of the 

 same species to each other, animals of prey to their prey, 

 herbivorous and granivorous animals to the plants or seeds 

 upon which they feed, it might be contended that the whole 

 of this correspondency was attributable to generation, the 

 common origin from which these substances proceeded. But 

 what shall we say to agreements which exist between things 

 generated and things not generated? Can it be doubted, 

 was it ever doubted, but that the hmgs of animals bear a 

 relation to the air, as a permanently elastic fluid ? They 

 act in it and by it ; they cannot act without it. Now, if 

 generation produced the animal, it did not produce the air ; 

 yet their properties correspond. The eye is made for light, 

 and light for the eye. The eye would be of no use without 

 light, and light perhaps of little without eyes ; yet one is 

 produced by generation, the other not. The ear depends 

 upon undidations of air. Here are two sets of motions : 

 first, of the pulses of the air ; secondly, of the drum, bones, 



