NATURAL THEOLOGY. 71 



ber would be incalculable. No reason can be 

 given why, if these deperdits ever existed, they 

 have now disappeared. Yet, if all possible exist- 

 ences have been tried, they must have formed part 

 of the catalogue.^" 



But moreover, the division of organized sub- 

 stances into animals and vegetables, and the distri- 

 bution and sub-distribution of each into genera and 

 species, which distribution is not an arbitrary act 

 of the mind, but founded in the order which pre- 

 vails in external nature, appear to me to contradict 

 the supposition of the present world being the re- 

 mains of an indefinite variety of existences ; of a 



20 No doubt men in different ages have asserted the possibihty 

 of all we see being made by chance ; but we are not uncharitable 

 when we say that no man ever believed it. It is easily shown, 

 that, of all the varieties of fabulous animals which have been bred 

 in the fertile imagination of the poet, not one could have lived. 

 They want that relation and balance of the different organs, that 

 provision running through the whole texture of the frame of the 

 animal, which we see in the natural productions. The sphinx has 

 wings, but no constitution of body to give these strength. The 

 griffin, with its hooked bill, has no feathers to prin, and no substi- 

 tute for teeth. The centaur has the body of the horse, but no 

 mouth to gather appropriate food. 



We may conclude, then, that these products of the imagination 

 are altogether abortive, and only tend to prove how exact the rela-. 

 tion must be of all the parts, and especially of the vital organs of 

 an animal, in order that it may live. 



As to the second position, that the animals which exist are the 

 happy results of chance when thousands have perished by imper- 

 fection, the supposition is contradicted by the perfect and harmo- 

 nious chain of beings forming the animal kingdom, in which there 

 is no link interrupted, no interval implying the loss of any species. 



