NATURAL THEOLOGY. C7 



liappy chance of a whole species : nor of one spe- 

 cies out of many thousand species, with which we 

 are acquainted, but of by far the greatest number 

 of all that exist ; and that under varieties, not ca- 

 sual or capricious, but bearing marks of being 

 suited to their respective exigencies : — that all 

 this should have taken place, merely because some- 

 thing must have occupied these points on every 

 animal's forehead ; — or, that all this should be 

 thought to be accounted for by the short answer, 

 " that whatever was there must have had some 

 form or other, " is too absurd to be made more so 

 by any augmentation. We are not contented with 

 this answer ; we find no satisfaction in it, by way 

 of accounting for appearances of organization far 

 short of those of the eye, such as we observe in 

 fossil shells, petrified bones, or other substances 

 which bear the vestiges of animal or vegetable 

 recrements, but which, either in respect to utility, 

 or of the situation in which they are discovered^ 

 may seem accidental enough. It is no way of 

 accounting even for these things, to say, that the 

 stone, for instance, which is shown to us (suppos- 

 ing the question to be concerning a petrification,) 

 must have contained some internal conformation 

 or other. Nor does it mend the answer to add, 

 with respect to the singularity of the conforma- 

 tion, that after the event, it is no longer to be com- 

 puted what the chances were against it. This is 

 always to be computed when the question is, whe- 

 ther a useful or imitative conformation be the pro- 



