Char XXIX. UNCONSCIOUS CO-OPERATION. 599 



the one vast plan of creative Providence, of which our finite 

 minds can take in only so minute a portion that we shall never 

 comprehend it as a whole till the end of all things ? In our 

 smaller sphere we can see many instances of unconscious co- 

 operation. Archbishop Whately points out the example of the 

 city of London, " a province covered with houses," supplied 

 with food with a certainty, completeness, and regularity to 

 which probably the most diligent benevolence, under the 

 guidance of the greatest human wisdom, could never have 

 attained. All the agency in this case is made up of men who 

 each thinks of nothing beyond his own immediate interest, and 

 yet they all unconsciously co-operate in carrying on a system, 

 which no human wisdom could have conducted so well. If 

 perfect adaptation of means to ends indicates wisdom and 

 design, we have in this instance both in full play ; for each 

 man, acting by motives addressed to his own free will, advances 

 as regularly and passively to an object, which the co-operators 

 as a whole never contemplated, as if he were one of the 

 wheels of a machine. The proofs of man in society being 

 guided by wisdom not his own, and to beneficial results he 

 never intended, are abundant wherever the human race is so 

 far advanced as to live under a form of government however 

 rude ; and indicate a plan of Providence which will at last be 

 clear to all, as one of consummate wisdom. 



The stagnation of mind in certain nations which have 

 preceded us in the line of discovery may also have been 

 intended, in order that the greatest power derivable from 

 science and art might be associated with the religion which 

 proclaims peace and good will to man. Had the power 

 given by inventions to the nations of Christendom been 

 awarded in the natural course of things to the men who were 

 first in the race, we see no earthly reason why the Buddhists 

 and Mohammedans should not now have lorded it over us 

 poor islanders with steamers, and all the improvements in 

 artillery, or that the Lancashire witches and Edinburgh 



