MAN. 5 



motive power, with the necessary organs, are variously super- 

 added, and endless varieties of organisation constructed, so that 

 air and water, the surface and the crust of the earth, are all re- 

 plenished with animals completely calculated for their respective 

 habitations. * 



Man y besides the common properties of animals, has others 

 which raise him to an immense superiority. His mind is endowed 

 with powers of the highest order that brutes have not, and his 

 body being, like the bodies of all animals, constituted in harmony 



an abundance of most interesting instances of reason in those insects. See also 

 Mr. Smellie's paper in the Transact, of Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. i. 

 p. 39. sqq. 



e An error has been committed not only in representing the gradation regular, 

 but in supposing every species of animal to constitute a distinct step in the grad- 

 ation. The whole chasm in nature," says Addison (Spectator, No. 519.), 

 " from a plant to a man, is filled up with divers kinds of creatures, rising one 

 above another, by such a gentle and easy ascent, that the little transitions and 

 deviations from one s'pecies to another are almost insensible." " All quite down 

 from us," says Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, b. iii. c. 6.), " the 

 descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove 

 differ very little one from the other. There are fishes that have wings, and are 

 not strangers to the airy region ; and there are some birds, that are inhabitants of 

 the water ; whose blood is cold as fishes, and their flesh so like in taste that the 

 scrupulous are allowed them on fish days. There are animals so near of kin 

 both to birds and beasts, that they are in the middle between both : amphibious 

 animals link the terrestrial and aquatic together, seals live at land and at sea, and 

 porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a hog ; not to mention what is 

 confidently reported of mermaids or sea men." " In respect of our intellectual 

 and moral principles," remarks Mr. Dugald Stewart (Outlines of Moral Philoso- 

 phy, par. 109.), " our nature does not admit of comparison with that of any other 

 inhabitant of this globe : the difference between our constitution and theirs being 

 a difference, not in degree, but in kind. Perhaps this is the single instance in 

 which that regular gradation, which we, every where else, observe in the universe, 

 fails entirely." 



Now the various kinds of animals do certainly run into each other ; there 

 are no great peculiarities of construction in single organs between which and the 

 ordinary structure of the same organs in other animals an intermediate structure 

 connecting the two are not continually brought to light by naturalists. No two 

 are so different but that discoveries are continually made of a third intermediate. 

 But connection is not gradation. Many kinds, and the intermediate ones by 

 which they are united, are all on a level in point of excellence and combination 

 of properties, so that a single step in the gradation may comprehend a great 

 number of kinds : the whole vegetable kingdom forms but one step. 



B 3 



