LECTURE VII. 307 



to love youth, health, and beauty of form ; 

 to delight in amiable dispositions, and 

 admire various kinds of intellectual excel- 

 lence. She has given us propensities which 

 tend to perfectionate the human race ; but 

 we, for mere lucre, become wedded to age, 

 disease, and deformity, malignity, folly, and 

 even insanity. " Quid non mortalia pec- 

 tor a cogis, auri sacra fames / " But if, like 

 Prometheus, we presume to give life in 

 opposition to the laws of Nature, we shall 

 receive the same punishment, for our chil- 

 dren will become the vultures that will 

 prey upon our vitals. 



In investigating this part of the works of 

 Nature, the multiplication of the species, we 

 perceive, as in other instances, the same uni- 

 formity of design, and diversity of means ; 

 the same gradation, and seeming concate- 

 nation in their series. Yet this concatena- 

 tion, though delightful and interesting to 

 our observation, is perplexing to our under- 

 standing; for each link of the chain is per- 

 fectly independent of the other, nor does 

 any necessity for such series and order, or 



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