63 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



nufacturing of the article, or in the fabrication of 

 the machinery by which the manufacture was car- 

 ried on. 



And, after all, how, or in what sense is it true, 

 that animals produce their like ? A butterfly, 

 with a proboscis instead of a mouth, with four 

 wings and six legs, produces a hairy caterpillar, 

 with jaws and teeth, and fourteen feet. A frog 

 produces a tadpole. A black beetle, with gauze 

 wings, and a crusty covering, produces a white, 

 smooth, soft worm ; an ephemeron fly, a cod-bait 

 maggot. These, by a progress through different 

 stages of life, and action, and enjoyment, (and, in 

 each state, provided with implements and organs 

 appropriated to the temporary nature which they 

 bear,) arrive at last at the form and fashion of the 

 parent animal. But all this is process, not princi- 

 ple ; and proves, moreover, that the property of 

 animated bodies, of producing their like, belongs 

 to them, not as a primordial property, not by any 

 blind necessity in the nature of things, but as the 

 effect of economy, wisdom, and design ; because 

 the property itself assumes diversities, and sub- 

 mits to deviations dictated by intelligible utilities, 

 and serving distinct purposes of animal happiness. 



The opinion, which would consider "genera- 

 tion" as a. ])rinciple in nature; and which would 

 assign this principle as the cause, or endeavour to 

 satisfy our minds with such a cause, of the exist- 

 ence of organized bodies; is confuted, in my judge- 

 ment, not only by every mark of contrivance dis- 



