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was, muscular action, i. e. reciprocal contraction and relaxation being given, to describe how fuch an animal might be conftructed, capable of voluntarily changing place. Something, perhaps, like the organization of reptiles, might have been hit upon by the ingenuity of an arift; or might have been exhibited in an automaton, by the combination of fprings, fpiral wires, and ringlets: but to the folution of the problem would not be denied, furely, the praise of invention and of fuccefsful thought; leaft of all could it ever be queftioned, whether intelligence had been employed about it, or not.

CHAP

CHAPTER XVII.

THE RELATION OF ANIMATED BODIES,
ΤΟ INANIMATE NATURE.

We have already confidered relation, and

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under different views; but it was the relation of parts to parts, of the parts of an animal to other parts of the fame animal, or of another individual of the fame fpecies.

But the bodies of animals hold, in their conftitution and properties, a close and important relation to natures altogether external to their own; to inanimate fubftances, and to the specific qualities of these, e. g. they hold a frict relation to the elements by which they are furrounded.

I. Can it be doubted, whether the wings of birds bear a relation to air, and the fins of fifb to water? They are inftruments of motion, feverally fuited to the properties of the medium in which the motion is to be performed: which properties are different. Was not this difference contemplated, when the instruments were differently constituted?

II. The

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II. The structure of the animal ear depends for its ufe not fimply upon being furrounded by a fluid, but upon the specific nature of that fluid. Every fluid would not ferve: its par ticles must repel one another; it must form an elaftic medium: for it is by the fucceffive pulfes of fuch a medium, that the undulations excited by the founding body are carried to the organ; that a communication is formed between the object and the fenfe; which must be done, before the internal machinery of the ear, fubtile as it is, can act at all.

III. The organs of fpeech, and voice, and respiration, are, no lefs than the ear, indebted, for the fuccefs of their operation, to the peculiar qualities of the fluid, in which the animal is immerfed. They, therefore, as well as the ear, are conftituted upon the fuppofition of fuch a fluid, i. e. of a fluid with fuch particular properties, being always prefent, Change the properties of the fluid, and the organ cannot act: change the organ, and the properties of the fluid would be loft, The ftructure therefore of our organs, and the properties of our atmosphere, are made for one another. Nor does it alter the relation, whether you alledge the organ to be made for

the

the element, (which feems the most natural way of confidering it,) or the element as prepared for the organ.

IV. But there is another fluid with which we have to do; with properties of its own; with laws of acting, and of being acted upon, totally different from those of air or water :and that is light. To this new, this fingular element; to qualities perfectly peculiar, perfectly distinct and remote from the qualities of any other fubftance with which we are acquainted, an organ is adapted, an inftrument is correctly adjufted, not lefs peculiar amongst the parts of the body, not lefs fingular in its form, and, in the fubftance of which it is compofed, not lefs remote from the materials, the model, and the analogy of any other part of the animal frame, than the element, to which it relates, is specific amidst the fubftances with which we converfe. If this does not prove appropriation, 1 desire to know what would prove it.

Yet the element of light and the organ of vision, however related in their office and use, have no connection whatever in their original. The action of rays of light upon the furfaces of animals has no tendency to breed eyes in

their heads.

The fun might shine for ever upon living bodies without the smallest approach towards producing the fenfe of fight. On the other hand also, the animal eye does not generate or emit light.

V. Throughout the universe there is a wonderful proportioning of one thing to another. The fize of animals, of the human animal especially, when confidered with respect to other animals, or to the plants which grow around him, is fuch, as a regard to his conveniency would have pointed out. A giant or a pigmy could not have milked goats, reaped corn, or mowed grafs; we may add, could not have rode a horfe, trained a vine, fhorn a fheep, with the fame bodily ease as we do, if at all. A pigmy would have been loft amongst rushes, or carried off by birds of

prey.

It may be mentioned likewife, that, the model and the materials of the human body being what they are, a much greater bulk would have broken down by its own weight. The perfons of men, who much exceed the ordinary ftature, betray this tendency.

VI. Again; and which includes a vast variety of particulars, and thofe of the greatest importance,

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