INDIVIDUALS AND SYSTEMS. 35 



hastens to foster and protect his terrestrial children ; 

 the simple motions of the earth in its orbit, and upon 

 its axis, bring about the whole with the most unerring 

 certainty. 



The pernicious effects of that small and illiberal 

 system, by which man seems prone to admire only that 

 which he fancies he can imitate, or rather, perhaps, 

 that which he would fain fancy is an imitation of him, 

 never appears so unwise and unworthy of a rational 

 being, as when one thinks of the greater machinery of 

 nature, by which seasons and all their wonderful and 

 varied productions are brought about. Levers, hinges, 

 pullies, cords, springs, saws, pincers, trephines, and all 

 other apparatus with which animals are furnished, 

 bearing any resemblance to the tools of human art; 

 threads, webs, excavations, cells and structures, and 

 all other matters that have any resemblance to those 

 objects, in the formation of which man employs his hand 

 and his tool : these are always matter of especial wonder. 

 The structure of the most trifling production of the 

 season is examined, and painted, and described, while 

 the season itself is unheeded ; and the most tiny insect 

 which the sunbeam warms into life, secures more atten- 

 tion than the sun itself, upon which all the organized 

 creatures of all the seasons of the world's history have 

 depended, and must depend. The plant or the animal 

 may be curious among its race, and each one is well 

 enough worthy of being studied according to its rela- 

 tive importance ; even the mere fact, that a grain of 

 sand an atom of the most etherial fluid a pencil of 

 light a pulse of electricity the polarity of a magnet, 



