224 ORALLY. 



in very humble and distant imitation of the mechanical con- 

 trivances of nature, human artists use, we at once admit that 

 the beaks of hawks and parrots, and the bills of ravens and 

 bitterns, must be efficient instruments ; but the peculiar 

 organizations with which the cross-bill and the avocet are 

 furnished, are apt to strike us at first sight as awkward and 

 ungainly. When, however, we come to study their applica- 

 tion, we find that the real subject of our criticism is our own 

 ignorance, and that we pity or despise only because we do 

 not understand ; and that, in everything which nature pro- 

 duces, be it a single organ, an entire animal, or whatever it 

 may, we always must admire, and not admire only, but be 

 delighted, to the full extent of our knowledge. The doctrine 

 of optimism, or " all is best," the sentence of approbation 

 which the Creator pronounced upon the new-made world, 

 still holds true, and will, throughout every change, hold true 

 to the end. Nor can it be otherwise ; because organization 

 goes hand-in-hand with instinct the very law and constitu- 

 tion of the nature of organic beings from which they can 

 no more deviate than lead can swim or air sink in water. 

 But man, proceeding by reason, or, which is the same 

 thing, by analogy or comparison, in which his own know- 

 ledge is always the standard, cannot well be right beyond 

 the bounds of that knowledge, and may be wrong within 

 them. 



What we, for want of a more appropriate name, call the 

 powers or energies of life, are all greatly in excess above the 

 matter on which any one without the others would have to 

 act ; and the natural means by which the one consumes the 

 surplus of the other, is the grand principle by which the 

 whole are preserved. 



When the predatory animal kills prey, be that prey what 

 it may, the animal has no purpose, it merely obeys an 

 instinct, and therefore it is neither kind nor cruel ; but the 



