Pagina-afbeeldingen
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I. To begin with the fructification of plants. Can it be doubted but that the feed contains a particular organization? Whether a latent plantule with the means of temporary nutrition, or whatever else it be, it inclofes an organization fuited to the germination of a new plant. Has the plant which produced the feed any thing more to do with that organization, than the watch would have had to do with the fructure of the watch which was produced in the course of its mechanical movement? I mean, Has it any thing at all to do with the contrivance? The maker and contriver of one watch, when he inferted within it a mechanifm fuited to the production of another watch, was, in truth, the maker and contriver of that other watch. All the properties of the new watch were to be referred to his agency: the defign manifefted in it, to his intention: the art, to him as the artist: the collocation of each part, to his placing the action, effect, and use, to his counsel, intelligence, and workmanship. In producing it by the intervention of a former watch, he was only working by one set of tools inftead of another. So is it with the plant, and the feed produced by it. Can any diftinction be affigned between the two cases; between

between the producing watch, and the producing plant? both paffive, unconscious subftances; both, by the organization which was given to them, producing their like, without understanding or defign; both, that is, inftruments.

II. From plants we may proceed to oviparous animals; from feeds to eggs. Now I fay, that the bird has the fame concern in the formation of the egg which he lays, as the plant has in that of the feed which it drops; and no other nor greater. The internal conftitution of the egg is as much a secret to the hen, as if the hen were inanimate. Her will cannot alter it, or change a single feather of the chick. She can neither forefee nor determine of which fex her brood fhall be, or how many of either yet the thing produced fhall be, from the firft, very different in its make, according to the fex which it bears. So far therefore from adapting the means, she is not beforehand apprised of the effect. If there be concealed within that smooth shell a provision and a preparation for the production and nourishment of a new animal, they are not of her providing or preparing: if there be contrivance, it is none of hers. Although, therefore,

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therefore, there be the difference of life and perceptivity between the animal and the plant, it is a difference which enters not into the account. It is a foreign circumftance. It is a difference of properties not employed. The animal function and the vegetable function are alike destitute of any defign which can operate upon the form of the thing produced. The plant has no defign in producing the feed, no comprehenfion of the nature or ufe of what it produces the bird with refpect to its egg, is not above the plant with respect to its feed. Neither the one nor the other bears that fort of relation to what proceeds from them, which a joiner does to the chair which he makes. Now a caufe, which bears this relation to the effect, is what we want, in order to account for the fuitablenefs of means to an end, the fitness and fitting of one thing to another: and this cause the parent plant or animal does not fupply.

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It is further obfervable, concerning the propagation of plants and animals, that the apparatus employed exhibits no resemblance to the thing produced; in this refpect holding an analogy with inftruments and tools of art. The filaments, antheræ, and ftigmata of flowers,

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bear no more refemblance to the young plant, or even to the feed, which is formed by their intervention, than a chifel or a plane does to a table or a chair. What then are the filaments, antheræ, and ftigmata of plants, but inftruments, ftrictly fo called?

III. We may advance from animals which bring forth eggs, to animals which bring forth their young alive; and, of this latter clafs, from the lowest to the higheft; from irrational to rational life, from brutes to the human fpecies; without perceiving, as we proceed, any alteration whatever in the terms of the comparison. The rational animal does not produce its offspring with more certainty o fuccefs than the irrational animal; a man than a quadruped, a quadruped than a bird; nor (for we may follow the gradation through its whole fcale) a bird than a plant; nor a plant than a watch, a piece of dead mechanism, would do, upon the fuppofition which has already so often been repeated. Rationality therefore has nothing to do in the business. If an account must be given of the contrivance which we obferve; if it be demanded, whence arofe either the contrivance by which the young animal is produced, or the contrivance mani

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fested in the young animal itself, it is not from the reason of the parent that any fuch account can be drawn. He is the cause of his offspring in the fame fenfe as that in which a gardener is the cause of the tulip which grows upon his parterre, and in no other. We admire the flower; we examine the plant; we perceive the conduciveness of many of its parts to their end and office; we observe a provifion for its nourishment, growth, protection, and fecundity: but we never think of the gardener in all this. We attribute nothing of this to his agency; yet it may ftill be true, that, without the gardener, we should not have had the tulip. Juft fo is it with the fucceffion of animals even of the highest order. For the contrivance discovered in the ftructure of the thing produced, we want a contriver. The parent is not that contriver. His confcioufness decides that question. He is in total ignorance why that which is produced took its present form rather than any other. It is for him only to be aftonished by the effect. We can no more look therefore to the intelligence of the parent animal for what we are in fearch of, a cause of relation and of fubferviency of parts to their ufe, which relation and subserviency we see in

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