OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY 
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hairy caterpillar, with jaws and teeth, and fourteen feet 
A frog produces a tadpole. A black beetle, with gauze 
wings, and a crusty covering, produces a white, smooth, 
soft worm; an ephemeron fly, a cod-bait maggot. These, 
by a progress through different stages of life, and action, 
and enjoyment, (and in each state provided with imple¬ 
ments and organs appropriated to the temporary nature 
which they bear,) arrive at last at the form and fashion of 
the parent animal. But all this is process, not principle; 
and proves, moreover, that the property of animated bodies, 
of producing their like, belongs to them, not as a primordial 
property, not by any blind necessity in the nature of things, 
but as the effect of economy, wisdom, and design; because 
the property itself assumes diversities, and submits to devi¬ 
ations dictated by intelligible utilities, and serving distinct 
purposes of animal happiness. 
The opinion, which would consider “ generation” as a 
'principle in nature; and which would assign this principle 
as a cause, or endeavour to satisfy our minds with such a 
cause, of the existence of organized bodies, is confuted, in 
my judgment, not only by every mark of contrivance dis¬ 
coverable in those bodies, for which it gives us no contriver, 
offers no account whatever; but also by the farther consid¬ 
eration, that things generated possess a clear relation to 
things not generated. If it were merely one part of a gen¬ 
erated body bearing a relation to another part of the same 
body, as the mouth of an animal to the throat, the throat 
to the stomach, the stomach to the intestines, those to the 
recruiting of the blood, and by means of the blood, to the 
nourishment of the whole frame; or if it were only one 
generated body bearing a relation to another generated 
body, as the sexes of the same species to each other, 
animals of prey to their prey, herbivorous and granivo- 
rous animals to the plants or seeds upon which they feed, 
it might be contended, that the whole of this correspon¬ 
dency was attributable to generation, the common origin 
from which these substances proceeded. But what shall 
we say to agreements which exist between things generat¬ 
ed and things not generated? Can it be doubted, was it 
ever doubted, but that the lungs of animals bear a relation 
to the air, as a permanently elastic fluid ? They act in it 
and by it; they cannot act without it. Now, if generation 
produced the animal, it did not produce the air; yet their 
properties correspond. The eye is made for light, and light 
for the eye. The eye would be of no use without light, 
and light perhaps of little without eyes; yet one is produc- 
