Selection, not to add in a moderate amount of careful observation 

 about liim by the reader himself: but perhaps a few remarks upon 

 the relative condition of man in his adaptation to his environ- 

 ment may not be out of place ; for this element of adaptation 

 in the argument of design has always seemed to me to be too 

 much depended upon. 



Starting with the truism that man can now exist upon this 

 world — a possibility which^ perhaps, did not exist in the greater 

 portion of the world^s history — we have to consider the degree 

 of perfection to which that adaptability has arrived ; and a 

 careful scrutiny will not bring out more than a relatively per- 

 fect view. Consider his wants. Food stands foremost. Now 

 his calculations on the produce of his fields can never be abso- 

 lute. He may be in no way to blame ; but, after all his 

 strivings, his harvest may be ruined. Again : one of the most 

 essential elements which nature furnishes to sustain our im- 

 mense manufactures is coal. We may regard coal as provi- 

 dentially stored up for us ; but we can conceive — if it be God's 

 providence — that it might have been far more accessible and 

 less dangerous to procure ; for even with the most careful pro- 

 cesses being adopted for its extraction, enormous danger to life 

 always exists. So too, with regard to accidents and calamities 

 by fires, earthquakes, and water. Who can foretell the fate of 

 man, who is ever liable to destruction from natural causes which 

 he cannot always avoid, and which he has no power to control? 

 Not to mention diseases, hundreds of instances show an absence 

 of a conceivably perfect adaptation between himself and his envi- 

 ronment, and which will be apparent to any one who will reflect 

 upon it. For example: in Dr. Kidd's contribution to the 

 Bridgewater Treatises, he alludes to the beneficial efiPect of wind 

 as dissipating intense heat, and as a preventive against the 

 evils of a stagnant atmosphere, — those currents of air which 

 administer in various modes as well to the luxury and comforts 

 of man, as to his most important wants (p. 135, 8vo. ed.). 

 But in his description he alludes as much to the destructive 

 eff'ects of wind as to its benefit, and to the existence of stagnant 

 air producing (?) horrible etfects, as goitre in Switzerland ; 

 while of hurricanes he can only say, " but on some occasions 

 we have immediate demonstration of their remedying a greater 

 evil [than the destruction of life and property which they cause] ; 

 viz., dissipating swarms of ants in the island of Grenada ! " It 

 may be questioned in passing whether the latter really is a 

 greater evil than the destruction of hundreds of human beings ! 

 Again : of Swiss valleys, all that he can say is, ''We may well 

 be thankful that our lot has not been cast in certain regions of 

 the earth, in those Alpine valleys, for instance, whose scarcely 



