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about that dead level of uniformity which chance would produce 
they still preserve what seems a superfluous richness of diversity 
in the result, the conclusion is surely forced upon us, that the 
whole has been the work of a guiding intelligence : and this 
conception of creative might, followed by formative energy 
ever moulding the universe with startling simplicity of means' 
yet with amazing diversity of result, is surely not less worthy 
than the cruder one, which would attribute to the Creator 
creative acts, yet refuse to trace the process of those acts. 
6 . I he highest results of human invention or constructive 
skill are always marked by simplicity in method and diversity 
in result. If we trace, for instance, the history of the steam- 
engine, we find that progress has been always in the direction 
ol simplicity ; the earlier engines are distinguished by complex 
aiiangements, which in the later forms are replaced by others 
at once more simple and more effective. In the steam- 
valve, we begin by clumsy complexity, and end in a result 
so simple that the wonder is that it was not the very first thing 
tried. If this be true of human work, need we fear to trace the 
same notes of perfect workmanship in nature ? It is specially 
rom this point of view that the study of geology is interesting 
to a chemist. We see clear evidence in the past of the forces 
now at work around us, of the disintegration of older rocks by 
air and water, and the formation of others from the detritus. 
, ut the general tendency of these forces is the mixture of the 
elements upon which they work ; we see and understand how 
the varied rocks of a watershed are reduced to the state of 
formless mud that we find at the mouth of a river. But so far 
from river mud being the chief result of this formation, we find 
that the elementary bodies are distributed with the most 
perplexing inequality. 
4. The chemist can, no doubt, in his laboratory effect with 
inore or less success the separation and combination of the 
elements ; but the processes he uses are in most instances of a 
na ure which it is absolutely imjiossible to conceive to have 
pro uced the natural minerals, and almost every specimen in a 
ininera ogical collection suggests chemical problems of the most 
interesting nature. Here, then, we have just those marks of 
e lghest workmanship of which I have spoken ; if we have 
iearnt anything from geology at all, the forces that have been 
a work are startlingly simple, and yet the variety of the results 
is such that not only we cannot with all our complex apparatus 
an varied means reproduce more than a small fraction of 
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