68 INFERENCE. [CHAP. n. 



Now let us suppose any of these peculiarities of im- 

 perfect organization to be changed or reversed, that 

 the mouth of the Foal was twice as convenient as it is 

 for draining the udder of its dam, but that its legs were 

 only half as capable of keeping company with her pro- 

 gress over the prairies, that the gallinaceous birds, 

 which make their nest on the hard earth, and are rough 

 in their motions, and scratch, never gently, with their 

 feet, that they had laid eggs as unwieldy and fragile 

 as those which the Megapodida3 or Brush Turkeys drop 

 and then bury in a soft stratum of sand and grass, 

 that the preponderance of growth in the young Pigeon, 

 instead of being directed to its bill, had been bestowed 

 upon strengthening its legs, or quickly pluming its 

 wings, suppose any such alterations as these, and what 

 fearful disasters would ensue ! So that even what we 

 call imperfect organization is made to subserve a wise 

 purpose ; out of weakness and deficiency are brought 

 forth strength to the individual, security and perma- 

 nence to the race ; just as in the moral world, what 

 at the time are often thought afflictions hard to bear, 

 prove in the end to have been the steps leading to 

 future welfare. 



The study, too, of these incomplete commencements 

 of existence in all animated beings, and of the way in 

 which that very incompleteness is made to answer a 

 purpose, must, one would say, prove that " the progres- 

 sion of forms," " the evolution of species," and their 

 advancement by some innate energy of their own, or 

 some " law " of nature, from fishes to reptiles, from 

 reptiles to birds and quadrupeds, from quadrupeds to 

 quadrumans or monkeys, and from monkeys to human 

 beings with a reasoning soul, is an error as complete as 



