832 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



lighting up his stoves, just when he wants to force 

 his fruit, and when his trees require the heat, gives 

 not a more certain evidence of design. So again; 

 when a male and female sparrow come together, 

 they do not meet to confer upon the expediency 

 of perpetuating their species. As an abstract 

 proposition, they care not the value of a barley- 

 corn whether the species be perpetuated, or not : 

 they follow their sensations, and all those conse- 

 quences ensue, which the wisest counsels could 

 have dictated, which the most solicito s care of fu- 

 turity, which the most anxious concern for the 

 sparrow-world, could have produced. But how 

 do these consequences ensue ? The sensations, 



this effect is produced by the influence of habit, and has no direct 

 connexion with the loss sustained. But habit might have had no 

 such effect, and it might have blunted instead of sharpening ; its 

 effect tends to lessen the evil of the loss sustained , and it produces 

 this advantage just as much as if the compensation had been the 

 direct and immediate consequence of that loss. We are not here 

 arguing the question of evil : that will be treated of hereafter, and 

 it is common to both suppositions; both to the case of immediate 

 and of mediate compensation. Again, — suppose, in generaliz- 

 ing, we could resolve all intellectual phenomena into some one 

 principle, as association, — all moral into some other, as habit, — 

 all physical into some third, as gravitation; — iny, suppose the 

 doctrines of some materialists to prevail, and that all mental and 

 all physical phenomena were resolvable into the operations of some 

 subtile fluid, — this would surely not weaken the arguments for 

 the unity of the Deity, if indeed it did not rather strengthen them; 

 it would in no degree detract from our conviction of his skill, nor 

 even of the variety of its operations ; and it would leave the argu- 

 ment as to goodness exactly where it stood before. — See Appen- 

 dix, Dissertation upon Evil. 



