56 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



secret to the hen as if the hen were inanimate. 

 Her will cannot alter it, or change a single feather 

 of the chick. She can neither foresee nor deter- 

 mine of which sex her brood shall be, or how 

 many of either ; yet the thing produced shall be, 

 from the first, very different in its make according 

 to the sex which it bears. So far, therefore, from 

 adapting the means, she is not beforehand apprized 

 of the effect. If there be concealed within that 

 smooth shell a provision and a preparation for the 

 production and nourishment of a new animal, they 

 are not of her providing or preparing ; if there be 

 contrivance, it is none of hers. Although, there- 

 fore, there be the difference of life and perceptivity 

 between the animal and plant, it is a difference 

 which enters not into the account ; — it is a foreign 

 circumstance ; it is a difference of properties not 

 employed. The animal function and the vegetable 

 function are alike destitute of any design which 

 can operate upon the form of the thing produced. 

 The plant has no design in producing the seed — 

 no comprehension of the nature or use of what it 

 produces : the bird, with respect to its egg, is not 

 above the plant with respect to its seed. Neither 

 the one nor the other bears that sort of relation 

 to what proceeds from them which a joiner does 

 to the chair which he makes. Now a cause which 

 bears this relation to the effect, is what we want, 

 in order to account for the suitableness of means 

 to an end — the fitness and fitting of one thing to 



