242 
OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 
least is not attempted to be accounted for by any other. In 
one important respect, however, the theory before us coin¬ 
cides with atheistic systems, viz. in that, in the formation 
of plants and animals, in the structure and use of their parts, 
it does away final causes. Instead of the parts of a plant 
or animal, or the particular structure of the parts, having 
been intended for the action or the use to which we see 
them applied, according to this theory, they have themselves 
grown out of that action, sprung from that use. The the¬ 
ory therefore dispenses with that which we insist upon, the 
necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent, design¬ 
ing mind, for the contriving and determining of the forms 
which organized bodies bear. Give our philosopher these 
appetencies; give him a portion of living irritable matter 
(a nerve, or the clipping of a nerve) to work upon; give 
also to his incipient or progressive forms, the power, in 
every stage of their alteration, of propagating their like; 
and, if he is to be believed, he could replenish the world 
with all the vegetable and animal productions which we at 
present see in it. 
The scheme under consideration is open to the same ob¬ 
jection with other conjectures of a similar tendency, viz. a 
total defect of evidence. No changes, like those which the 
theory requires, have ever been observed. All the changes 
in Ovid’s Metamorphoses might have been effected by these 
appetencies, if the theory were true: yet not an example, 
nor the pretence of an example, is offered of a single 
change being known to have taken place. Nor is the or¬ 
der of generation obedient to the principle upon which this 
theory is built. The mammae * of the male have not van¬ 
ished by inusitation; nec curtorum, per multa scecula, Ju- 
dceorum propagini deest preepuiium. It is easy to say, and 
it has been said, that the alterative process is too slow to 
be perceived; that it has been carried on through tracts of 
immeasurable time; and that the present order of things is 
the result of a gradation, of which no human records can 
trace the steps. It is easy to say this; and yet it is still 
true, that the hypothesis remains destitute of evidence. 
The analogies which have been alleged, are of the fol¬ 
lowing kind. The bunch of a camel is said to be no other 
than the effect of carrying burdens; a service in which 
* I confess myself totally at a loss to guess at the reason, either final 
or efficient, for this part of the animal frame, unless there be some foun¬ 
dation for an opinion, of which I draw the hint from a paper of Sir Eve- 
rard Home’s, (Phil. Transac. 1799, p. 2,) viz. that the mammae of the 
foetus may be formed before the sex is determined. 
