AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 



93 



decays: everything dies, but nothing is lost : for the great principle of life 

 only changes its form, and the destruction of one generation is the vivifica- 

 tion of the next.* Hence, the Hindoo mythologists, with a force and elegance 

 peculiarly striking, and which are nowhere to be paralleled in the theogonies 

 of Greece and Rome, describe the Supreme Being, whom they denominate 

 Brahm, as forming and regulating the universe through the agency of a triad 

 of inferior gods, each of whom contributes equally to the general result, under 

 the names of Brahma, Visnu, and Iswara ; or the generating power, the pre- 

 serving or consummating power, and the decomposing power. And hence 

 the Christian philosopher, with a simplicity as much more sublime than the 

 Hindoo's, as it is more veracious, exclaims, on contemplating the regular con- 

 fusion, the intricate harmony, of the scenes that rise before him — 



These, as they change, Almighty Father ! these 

 Are but the varied God. The rolling year 

 Is full of Thee. 



LECTURE IX. 



ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 

 (The subject continued.) 



The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive 

 system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but con- 

 cealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that 

 seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, 

 and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in refer- 

 ence to the proposed result. 



Such is the great art of nature : and he who would study it with success 

 must, as far as he is able, trace out its various laws, and reduce them to 

 general principles, and collect its separate phenomena, and digest them into 

 general classes. This, in many instances, we are able to do ; and in such 

 cases we obtain a tolerable insight into the nature of things. But so vast, so 

 unbounded is the theatre before us, so complicated is its machinery, and so 

 closely does one fact follow up and press upon another, that we are often 

 bewildered and lost in the mighty maze, and are incapable of determining the 

 laws by which it is regulated, or of arranging the phenomena of which it is 

 composed. 



The zoologist, in order to assist his inquiries, divides the whole animal 

 creation into six general heads or classes : as those of mammals, birds, am- 

 phibials, fishes, insects, and worms. Each of these classes he subdivides 

 into orders;. of each of his orders he makes a distinct section for a multi- 

 tude of kinds or genera; and each of his kinds becomes a still more subor- 

 dinate section for the species or individuals of which the separate kinds con- 

 sist. But he is perpetually finding, not only that many cases in each of his 

 inferior divisions are so equally allied to other divisions that he knows not 

 how to arrange them, but that even his classes or first divisions themselves 

 labour under the same difficulty; since he occasionally meets with animals 

 that by the peculiarity of their construction seem equally to defy all artificial 

 method and all natural order. Thus the myxine glutinosa, which by Linnaeus 

 was regarded and ranked as a worm, has been introduced by Bloch into the 

 class of fishes, and is now known by the name of gastrobranchus ccecus, or 

 hag-fish. The siren lacertina, which was at first contemplated by Linneeus 

 as an amphibious animal of a peculiar genus, was afterward declared by 



•See upon this subject the Swedish Amcenitates Academicae, vol, v. art. 80, by J. H. Hagen, 1757, enti- 

 tled Natura Pelagi. 



