or NATURAL HISTORY. 521 



CHAPTER XXII. 



Of the ProgreJJive Scale or Chain of Beings in the IJniverfi. 



JL O men of obfervation and refle6\ion, it 15 ap- 

 parent, that all the beings on this earth, whether animals or 

 vegetables, have a mutual connecStion and a mutual depen- 

 dence on each other. There is a graduated fcale or chain o£ 

 exiftence, not a link of which, however feemingly infignifi- 

 cant, could be broken without affedling the whole. Super- 

 ficial men, or, which is the fame thing, men who avoid the 

 trouble of ferious thinking, wonder at the defign of produc- 

 ing certain infe<Sl:s and reptiles. But they do not confider- 

 that the annihilation of any one of thefe fpecies, though 

 fome of them are inconvenient, and even noxious to man^ 

 would make a blank in Nature, and prove deftru<Slive to 

 other fpecies who feed upon them. Thefe, in their turn, 

 would be the caufe of deftroying other fpecies, and the fyf-^ 

 tern of devaftation would gradually proceed, till man himfelf 

 would be extirpated, and leave this earth deflitute of all ani^ 

 mation. 



In the chain of animals, man is unquefllonably the chief 

 or capital link, and from him all the other links defcend by 

 almoft imperceptible gradations. As a , highly rational ani- 

 mal, improved with fcience and arts, he is, in fome meafure, 

 related to beings of a faperior order, wherever they exift. 

 By contemplating the works of Nature, he even rifes to 

 fome faint ideas of her great Author. Why, it has been 

 allied, are not men endowed with the capacity and powers 

 of angels ? beings of whom we have not even a conceptiono 

 With the fame propriety, it may be allced, why have not. 

 beafts the mental powers of men ? Queftions of this kind 



