NATURAL THEOLOGY. 69 



IV. There is another answer which has the 

 same eflect as the resolving of things into chance ; 

 which answer would persuade us to believe, that 

 the eye, the animal to which it belongs, every other 

 animal, every plant, indeed every organized body 

 which we see, are only so many out of the possi- 

 ble varieties and combinations of being which the 

 lapse of infinite ages has brought into existence ; 

 that the present world is the relic of that variety ; 

 millions of other bodily forms and other species 

 having perished, being, by the defect of their con- 

 stitution, incapable of preservation, or of continu- 

 ance by generation. Now there is no foundation 

 whatever for this conjecture in any thing which 

 we obsen-e in the works of nature ; no such expe- 



without design. All we can mean by the expression is, that our 

 design stops short at a certain point, and leaves the laws of nature 

 to guide the rest of the operation. But such a position is mani- 

 festly quite inapplicable to the operations of nature. 



Equally inaccurate is it, if not more so, to speak of a wen or a 

 pimple, &c., as the result of any cause in the least degree different 

 from that which produced the eye. These are possibly always, 

 certainly sometimes, diseases ; but they are the result of contri- 

 vance as clearly as the eye itself. The functions of the animal 

 system, though acting in an unusual manner, yet acting according 

 to rule, produce these phenomena. Indeed one of them, a pimple, 

 is, in part at least, the result of the provision made for restoring 

 the interrupted continuity of the skin, by a slight suppm-ation from 

 which the granulation, or production of new animal fibre, takes 

 place. The like remark applies to the cases of a clod, pebble, or 

 liquid drop, also put in this passage. We have already adverted 

 to the two first in a former note ; the formation of a drop is in 

 truth one of the phenomena of gravitation, and a very remarkable 

 one. 



