116 ANIMATION IN CORROSIVE MEDIA SUPPORTS THEORY. 



animated nature. The existence of INDEPENDENT MATE- 

 RIALITY is so universally condemned, that there is not to be 

 found an atheist on earth to proclaim himself such ; or a man 

 so daring as to acknowledge the bare contemplation, much less 

 the avowal, of such irrational opinions ; and the TIMOROUS 

 MIND may satisfy itself, that the production of animalculae by 

 Mr. Cross, from the action or agency of bodies of a reputed 

 poisonous nature, is about as effectual in lessening our faith 

 in DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE, as the production of MITES in cheese, 

 exhibiting, as they do by their existence, the BOUNTIFUL ECO- 

 NOMY observable throughout the universe. 



On the contrary, it would only show us the implied simpli- 

 city of the primary constituents -, their paucity in number, and 

 universal application for the beneficial purposes of man, so 

 that the same constituents which in one instance have per- 

 formed their duty, as light, air, the grass of the field, the 

 sustenance of the cow, milk, cheese, passing in its stages of 

 fermentation (the putrefactive) to the formation of minute 

 animated insects, to be again (at their termination of life) 

 resolved into the appropriate forms, to resume alternately th.e 

 prescribed round of UNCEASING CHANGE. In the second in- 

 stance we find that the SAME constituents having been exhi- 

 bited in the shape of corrosive acids and insipid earthy matter, 

 by mutual re-action, and by being submitted to Voltaic arrange- 

 ments mechanically applied, have produced a species of animal- 

 culse which from their organization are able to sustain life, in 

 the deleterious mediae in which they originated, and are an 

 example of the protection afforded by polar arrangement, and 

 rather a support to this hypothesis as showing the opposite pur- 

 poses to which the primary elements of MATTER are, by varia- 

 tion of the order exercised in their polarity of combination, 

 capable of being applied. 



Bacon says, " There are two principal services, besides orna- 

 ment and illustration, which philosophy and human learning 

 perform to religion : the one consists in effectually exciting to 



