LAWS OF CO-EXISTENCE. 241 



Jimits to its power, it is but another signal < instance of 

 that beautiful harmony which pervades all its works, and 

 binds them together as necessary parts of the great gen- 

 eral system. It has been owing to an ignorance of these 

 beautiful and invariable laws of organization, that so many 

 impositions have been practised on the community, and 

 even deceived rnen of good common sense, and in other 

 matters, of general intelligence. Those abominable mon- 

 strosities so often exhibited about as veritable specimens 

 of the mermaid race, are violations of nature as gross and 

 absurd as the Centaur of the ancients, or the poetical 

 image which embellishes the Kentucky hunters' song, 

 " half horse, half alligator." 



To recapitulate these remarks, we observe generally 

 that the grand result produced by the action of the vital 

 organs, is not to be considered merely as a combination 

 of the action of each particular organ, but as the effects 

 of their necessary and mutual relations ; and consequent- 

 ly that a change in the condition of one function will not 

 only vary the general result, but also the particular ac- 

 tion of the other functions. 



Emily. It seems in fact to be very like the economy of 

 our own republic, where each portion of which it is com- 

 posed, not only regulates its own concerns, but contributes 

 its part to the management of the common interest. 



.Dr. B. Your comparison is as just as it is clear. 

 Had a knowledge of these principles been more gener- 

 ally extended, the world would have been spared those 

 absurd theories, which under the name of philosophy, 

 have been seriously constructed and greatly admired. 

 One of these philosophers imagines that man owes his 

 superiority over the animal creation, to the form of his 

 hands ; another, to his erect position ; and many others 

 to his intellectual gifts, and have proved the truth of 

 their theories, by showing what a different creature man 

 would be without these several conditions. 



Emily. To talk about what man would be, with a 

 different conformation of this or that organ, is about as 



