OF LIVING FORMS; OR, MORPHOLOGY. 77 



If we carry this thought with us, and remember 

 that nothing can make life less beautiful or less 

 divine, but that to see life essentially involved in 

 nature, and flowing as a necessary consequence from 

 her profoundest laws, would make those laws, to us, 

 unutterably more divine and beautiful, we can enter 

 into the spirit of a remonstrance which Bacon acl- 

 dresseoto the men of his age, and may feel, perhaps, 

 that it is even yet not out of date : " To say that 

 the hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and fence 

 about the sight ; or that the firmness of the skins and 

 hides of living creatures is to defend them from the 

 extremities of heat and cold ; or that the bones are 

 for the columns, or beams, whereupon the frame of 

 the bodies of living creatures is built; or that the 

 leaves of the trees are for the protecting of the fruit ; 

 or that the clouds are for watering of the earth ; or 

 that the solidness of the earth is for the station and 

 mansion of living creatures ; and the like : is well 

 inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic 

 they are impertinent ; nay, they are indeed but 

 remoras and hindrances, to stay and slug the ship 

 from further sailing, and have brought this to pass, 



