272 VESTIGES OF THE 



action of our faculties places in our power : we should 

 not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a 

 level with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that 

 the very fineness of man's constitution, that which places 

 him in such a high relation to the mundane economy, 

 and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely 

 delightful sensations — it is this which makes him liable 

 to the sufferings of disease. It might be said, on the 

 other hand, that the noxiousness of the agencies produc- 

 ing disease might have been diminished or extinguished ; 

 but the probability is, that this could not have been done 

 without such a derangement of the whole economy of 

 nature as would have been attended with more serious 

 evils. For example — a large class of diseases are the 

 result of effluvia from decaying organic matter. This 

 kind of matter is known to be extremely useful, when 

 mixed with earth, in favouring the process of vegetation. 

 Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution 

 done away with, might we not also lose that important 

 quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised 

 from the ground ? Perhaps (as has been suggested) the 

 noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to induce 

 us to put away decaying organic sul)stances into the 

 earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now 

 man has reason to enable him to see that such substances 

 are beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the 

 other. He is, as it were, commanded to take the right 

 method in dealing with them. In point of fact, men do 

 not always take this method, but allow accumulations of 

 noxious matter to gather close about their dwellings, 

 where they generate fevers and agues. But their doing so 

 may be regarded as only a temporary exception from the 

 operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which 

 is to make men adopt tlie proper measures. And these 



