280 NATURAL THEOLOaY. 



taut respect, however, the theory before us coincides with 

 atheistic systems, namely, in that, in the formation of plants 

 and animals, in the structure and use of their parts, it does 

 away final causes. Instead of the parts of a plant or ani- 

 mal, or the particular structure of the parts, having been 

 intended for the action or the use to which we see them 

 applied, according to this theory they have themselves 

 grown out of that action, sprung from that use. The theory, 

 therefore, dispenses with that which we insist upon, the 

 necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent, design- 

 ing mind, for the contriving and determining of the forms 

 which organized bodies bear. Give our philosopher these 

 appetencies ; give him a portion of living irritable matter — 

 a nerve, or the clipping of a nerve — to work upon ; give also 

 to his incipient or progressive forms the power, in every 

 stage of their alteration, of propagating their like ; and, il 

 he is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all 

 the vegetable and animal productions which we at present 

 see in it. 



The scheme under consideration is open to the same ob- 

 jection with other conjectures of a similar tendency, namely, 

 a total defect of evidence. No changes like those which the 

 theory requires, have ever been observed. All the changes 

 in Ovid's Metamorphoses might have been effected by these 

 appetencies, if the theory were true ; yet not an example, 

 nor the pretence of an example, is offered of a single change 

 being known to have taken place. Nor is the order of gen- 

 eration obedient to the principle upon which this theory is 

 built. The mammas* of the male have not vanished by 

 inusitation ; ncc curtoruni, iier multa scecida, Judceorum 

 jjropagini deest prceputiu?7i. It is easy to say, and it has 



^ I confess myself totally at a loss to guess at the reas >n, either 

 filial or efficient, for this part of the animal frame ; unless there be 

 some foundation for an opinion, of which I draw the hint from a paper 

 of Mr. Ererard Home, Phil. Transact. 1799, pt. 2, namely, that thf 

 mammae of the foetus may be formed before the sex is determined. 



