104 Dr. Drummond on the Equivocal 
form and functions of a worm. Nor further, has any entozoon 
been found in a semi-state of formation. There is never any 
intermediate stage in which it can be shown that the animal 
is in its transit from an accidental origin to the more perfect 
state, in which it shall exhibit a complex and independent or- 
ganization, and like other animals, have organs for the conti- 
nuation of its species. It would, indeed, require no inconsider- 
able stretch of imagination to conceive that a portion of ef- 
fused lymph could assume to itself the power of producing 
other similar, or rather very dissimilar portions, which would 
propagate their kind from generation to generation, in secula 
seculorum; for I incline to the belief that the Tenie and Lum- 
brict of Hippocrates were as much the progenitors of those 
found at the present day, as were the men and women of his 
time the ancestors of those now living in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 
In considering the formation of any animal, we cannot move 
a step without reference to an all-powerful architect ; in every 
structural part, in every function, in every action, in every 
instinct of such animal, we perceive so great a degree of con- 
trivance, creative power and wisdom, that the conviction is 
forced upon us that these cannot be the work of chance, that 
“there cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, with- 
out a contriver ; order, without choice ; arrangement, without 
anything capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to 
a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means 
suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplish- 
ing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, 
or the means accommodated to it*.””? Yet, in the doctrine of 
spontaneous generation all these are dispensed with ; we have 
“contrivance without a contriver, and design without a de- 
signer,” and a number of atoms collected together form them- 
selves into wonderfully fabricated and sentient beings, inde- 
pendent of those conditions by which other organized bodies 
are produced. An insensible mass of matter will, we know, 
become developed into a living being of most complicated 
structure and wonderful ceconomy; an egg will be hatched into 
a peacock, but the egg could never have existed but for its fe- 
male parent, nor could it ever be hatched into the living bird 
without having received the permanent vital principle from 
its male progenitor, in obedience to those laws ordained by 
the Deity when the first male and female peacock were 
created; but the beings of equivocal generation are independ- 
ent of all such laws; of the contrivance which they display 
* Paley’s Natural Theology. 
