ORGANIC MECHANISM. 51 



ster, the most refined and exquisite conformation. 

 Yet, as I sliall have occasion to specify more in 

 detail in its proper place, this little spherical body, 

 scarcely larger than a pea, is composed of upwards 

 of five millions of fibres, which lock into one an- 

 other by means of more than sixty-two thousand 

 five hundred millions of teeth. If such be the 

 complication of a portion only of the eye of that 

 animal, how intricate must be the structure of the 

 other parts of the same organ, having equally im- 

 portant offices! What exquisite elaboration must 

 those textures have received, whose functions are 

 still more refined ! What marvellous workmanship 

 must have been exercised in the organization of the 

 nerves and of the brain, those subtle instruments 

 of the higher animal faculties, and of which even 

 the modes of action are to us not merely inscrut- 

 able, but surpassing all our powers of conception ! 

 It is from the energies of life alone that organic 

 forms are produced. No fabric achieved by human 

 power ever approached in refinement the simplest 

 of nature's works. The utmost efforts of the inge- 

 nuity or skill of man in the construction of the 

 most delicate machinery is infinitely surpassed by 

 the most ordinary of the mechanisms which are 

 presented to our view in living bodies. However 

 successful may be human artists in their attempts 

 to contrive automata, which shall exactly imitate 

 different animal movements, there will always be 

 wanting that internal principle of action, derived 

 from a higher source than mechanism can supply, 

 and without which these highly wrought works of 

 man, like the unvivified statues of Prometheus, 

 must remain for ever mere masses of insentient and 

 inert materials. 



