NATURAL THEOLOGY. 331 



for example, that the hen is induced to brood upon 

 her eggs by the enjoyment or rehef which, in the 

 heated state of her abdomen, she experiences from 

 the pressure of round smooth surfaces, or from 

 the apphcation of a temperate warmth. How 

 comes this extraordinary heat or itching, or call it 

 what you will, which you suppose to be the cause 

 of the bird's inclination, to be felt just at the time 

 when the inclination itself is wanted : when it 

 tallies so exactly with the internal constitution 

 of the egg, and with the help which that constitu- 

 tion requires in order to bring it to maturity ? In 

 my opinion, this solution, if it be accepted as to 

 the fact, ought to increase, rather than otherwise, 

 our admiration of the contrivance,'^ A gardener 



'■^ Whether we regard the argument of existence, or of attri- 

 butes, the truth here glanced at is of extreme importance, and it 

 pervades the whole of Natural Theology, It will be more fully 

 illustrated in the Appendix, and in the notes to the subsequent 

 chapters. When skeptics think they have destroyed one reason 

 for believing in the skill or in the goodness of the Deity, by an 

 explanation of the means used for producing some given effect, 

 they only remove our admiration and our gratitude from one point 

 to another, and often augment both the one and the other. Sup- 

 pose it were discovered, contrary to all probability, that the bee 

 makes the angles of 109° 28' and 70*^ 32' by means of some bodily 

 conformation which secures this result, — some form of its own 

 parts answering to those angles, if such a thing can be conceived ; 

 the wonder is only removed from the working of the insect without 

 a tool to its using a tool provided for it by the intelligence which 

 had solved the problem of maxima and minima, whence this con- 

 formation is a corollary. Again, — the loss of one sense, as the 

 sisht, quickens our perceptions through the organs of those senses 

 which remain, — as touch and hearing. It is most probable that 



