NATURAL THEOLOGY. 15 



difference; but still the difference destroys the 

 analogy. 



Our ignorance, moreover, of the sensitive na- 

 tures, by which other planets are inhabited, neces- 

 sarily keeps from us the knowledge of number- 

 less utilities, relations, and subserviences, which 

 we perceive Upon our own globe. 



After all; the real subject of admiration is, that 

 we understand so much of astronomy as we do. 

 That an animal confined to the surface of one of 

 the planets ; bearing a less proportion to it than 

 the smallest microscopic insect does to the plant 

 it lives upon: that this little, busy, inquisitive crea- 

 ture, by the use of senses which were given to it 

 for its domestic necessities, and by means of the 

 assistance of those senses which it has had the art 

 to procure, should have been enabled to observe 

 the whole system of worlds to which its own be- 

 longs; the changes of place of the immense globes 

 which compose it ; and with such accuracy as to 

 mark out beforehand the situation in the heavens 

 in which they will be found at any future point of 

 time ; and that these bodies, after sailing through 

 regions of void and trackless space, should arrive 

 at the place where they were expected, not within 

 a minute, but within a few seconds of a minute, of 

 the time prefixed and predicted : all this is won- 

 derful, whether we refer our admiration to the 

 constancy of the heavenly motions themselves, or 

 to the perspicacity and precision with which they 

 have been noticed by jmankind. Nor is this the 



