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Selection, not to add in a moderate amount of careful observation 
about him 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 worlds 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 effect of wind 
as dissipating intense heat, and as a preventive against the 
evils of a stagnant atmosphere, — 4f 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 
effects of wind as to its benefit, and to the existence of stagnant 
air producing (?) horrible effects, 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, f ‘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 
