CONCLUSION. 315 



or were deviations from a common form to bear no 

 distinct reference to their localities and instincts, it 

 would be less easy to refute the comfortless theory of 

 the infidel, who refers all the operations of nature to 

 material causes and excludes from the universe the 

 designing hand of an intelligent Creator. There 

 might then be less absurdity in the monstrous hypo- 

 thesis which teaches that all things have been the 

 result of a mere brute mechanism, and that the same 

 active but blind and insensible powers which produce 

 a crystal have, under happier combinations, called into 

 existence more perfect organizations, and resulted in 

 the formation of living beings. Such an argument 

 would still indeed have been quite untenable, but the 

 demonstration by which it is disproved would have 

 been less perfect and satisfactory had we been unable 

 to show with what extreme and anxious solicitude the 

 most minute particulars in the organic structure of 

 each species of animal are made to harmonize with 

 each other, and with what surpassing skill they are 

 suited to their individual nature and offices. 



Such a mode of reasoning presents itself to the 

 mind with peculiar force when any one organ is 

 selected, and its peculiarities are distinctly traced in 

 different races of living creatures. A recent author 

 has employed an argument of this kind with much 

 felicity in reference to the human hand*. He has 

 traced the rudiments and frame-work of this most 

 perfect mechanical contrivance through all the various 

 species of mammalia, beginning at the monkey and 

 ending with the whale, arid his demonstrations show 

 that the very same instrument is employed in them 

 all, but that it is with the most astonishing wisdom 

 adapted to the peculiar faculties and functions of each 

 distinct tribe, being moulded in one class into a paw, 

 in another into a solid hoof, in a third into a tool for 

 * Sir Charles Bell's Bridgewater Treatise. 



