220 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XII. 



COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 



Whenever we find a general plan pursued, yet 

 with such variations in it as are, in each case, 

 required by the particular exigency of the subject 

 to which it is applied, we possess, in such a plan 

 and such adaptation, the strongest evidence that 

 can be afforded of intelligence and design : an evi- 

 dence which the most completely excludes every 

 other hypothesis. If the general plan proceeded 

 from any fixed necessity in the nature of things, 

 how could it accommodate itself to the various 

 wants and uses which it had to serve under differ- 

 ent circumstances, and on different occasions ? 

 ArkwrighVs mill was invented for the spinning of 

 cotton. We see it employed for the spinning of 

 wool, flax, and hemp, with such modifications of 

 the original principle, such variety in the same 

 plan, as the texture of those different materials 

 rendered necessary. Of the machine's being put 

 together with design, if it were possible to doubt 

 whilst we saw it only under one mode, and in one 

 form ; when we came to observe it in its different 

 applications, with such changes of structure, such 

 additions and supplements, as the special and par- 

 ticular use in each case demanded, we could not 



