VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIB'E. 



the common principle of vitality to its first outlines ; I am endeavouring to 

 unfold to you, in its simplest and rudest operations, that grand, and won- 

 derful, and comprehensive system, which, though under different modifica- 

 tions, unquestionably controlling both plants and animals, from the first 

 moment it begins to act infuses energy into the lifeless clod, draws forth 

 form and beauty, and individual being, from unshapen matter, and stamps 

 with organization and propensities the common dust we tread upon. And 

 if, in this its lowest scale of operation, — if, under the influence of these its 

 simplest laws, and the m^re powers (so far as we are able to trace them) 

 of contractility and irritability, it be capable of producing effects thus 

 striking, thus incomprehensible, what may we not expect when the outhne 

 is filled up and the system rendered complete ? What may we not expect 

 when we behold, superadded to the powers of contractility and irritability^ 

 those of sensation and voluntary motion ? What, more especially, when 

 to these are still further added the ennobling faculties of a rational and 

 intelligent soul, — the nice organs of articulation and speech, the eloquence 

 of language, — the means of interchanging ideas, and of embodying, if I 

 may so express myself, all the phaenomena of the mind ? 



Such are the important subjects to which our subsequent studies are to 

 be directed. In the meantime, from the remarks which have already been 

 hazarded, we cannot, I think, but be struck with the two following sublime 

 characters, which pre-eminently, indeed, distinguish all the works of na- 

 ture : — a grand comprehensiveness of scheme, a simple but beautiful 

 circle of action, by which every system is made to contribute to the well- 

 being of every system, every part to the harmony and happiness of the 

 whole ; and a nice, and delicate, and ever-rising gradation from shapeless 

 matter to form, from form to feeling, from feehng to intellect, from the 

 clod to the crystal, from the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the ani- 

 mal, from brutal life to man. Here, placed on the summit of this stu- 

 pendous pyramid, lord of all around him, the only being through the whole 

 range of the visible creation endowed with a power of contemplating and 

 appreciating >*he magnificent scenery by which he is encompassed, and of 

 adoring itS//Almighty Architect— at once the head, the heart, and the 

 tongue of the whole — well, indeed, may he exult and rejoice ! But let 

 him rejoice with modesty. For, in the midst of this proud exaltation, it is 

 possible that he forms but one of the lowest links in " the golden ever- 

 lasting chain" of intelhgence ; that he stands on the mere threshold of the 

 world of perception ; and that there exists at least as wide a disproportion 

 between the sublimest characters that ever were born of women, our Ba- 

 cons, Newtons, and Lockes, our Aristotles, Des Cartes, and Eulers, and 

 the humblest ranks of a loftier world, as there is between these highly- 

 gifted mortals and the most unknowing of the animal creation. Yet mind, 

 thanks to its beneficent bestower ! is itself immortal, and knowledge is 

 eternally progressive ; and hence man, too, if he improve the talents in- 

 trusted to him, as it is his duty to do, may yet hope, unblamed, to ascend 

 hereafter as high above the present sphere of these celestial intelligences, 

 as they are at present placed above the sphere of man. But these are 

 speculations in some degree too sublime for us ; the moment we launch 

 into them, that moment we become lost, and find it necessary to return 

 with suitable modesty to our proper province, an examination of the 

 world around us ; where, with all the aids of which we can avail ourselves, 

 we shall still find difiiculties enough to try the wisdom of the "wisest. 

 the pa^ie.ncf? of the most perf5everin£r 



