THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 117 



ment and in the purposes which they serve in the world. 

 They may be said to stand in a connexion analogous to that 

 in which the planets are placed by the third law of Kepler. 

 And the inference with regard to their origin is the same. 

 Precisely as it is impossible to suppose a distinct exertion 

 or fiat of Almighty Power for the formation of the earth, 

 wrought up as it is in a complex dynamical connexion, first 

 with Yenus on the one hand and Mars on the other, and 

 secondly with all the other members of the system, so is it 

 impossible to conceive the same power using particular means 

 for the production of a particular animal species, an indivi- 

 dualized fraction, as it now appears, in a vast system which 

 would not be complete without it, and into whose adjacent 

 parts it melts by the finest shadings. Supposing, for a 

 moment, that each species had been distinct in its origin, 

 these shadings would have been unnecessary; and there 

 would at least have been a strong probability against a unity 

 of organization being adopted as part of the plan. In that 

 case, abortive or rudimentary organs must have been con- 

 sidered as a kind of blemish the thing of all others most 

 irreconcilable with that idea of perfection which a general 

 view of nature irresistibly attributes to its author. If, on the 

 other hand, we admit that the animal kingdom took its rise 

 in a general law, we see in the shadings and the organic 

 unity something not only harmonious with, but essential to 

 the system. Rudimentary organs, too, appear but as harm- 

 less peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of 

 the manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to 

 work. 



It must be easy to see how this class of facts bears on the 

 great question. Organisms we know to have been produced, 

 not at once, but in the course of a vast series of ages ; here 

 we now see that they are not a group of individually entire 

 things accidentally associated, but parts of great masses, 

 nicely connected, and integral in their respective totalities. 

 Time, and a succession of forms in gradation and affinity, 

 become elements in the idea of organic creation. It must be 

 seen that the whole phenomena thus pass into strong analogy 



