Pagina-afbeeldingen
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There is hardly, perhaps, a year paffes, that does not, in the works of nature, bring fome operation, or fome mode of operation, to light, which was before undifcovered, probably unfufpected. Instances of the fecond kind, namely, where the part appears to be totally useless, I believe to be extremely rare: compared with the number of thofe, of which the' ufe is evident, they are beneath any affignable proportion and, perhaps, have never been fubmitted to a trial and examination fufficiently accurate, long enough continued, or often enough repeated. No accounts which I have seen are fatisfactory. The mutilated animal may live and grow fat, as was the cafe of the dog deprived of its fpleen, yet may be defective in fome other of its functions; which whether they can all, or in what degree of vigour and perfection, be performed, or how long preferved, without the extirpated organ,does not seem to be ascertained by experiment.) But to this cafe, even were it fully made out, may be applied the confideration which we suggested concerning the watch, viz. that thefe fuperfluous parts do not negative the rea foning which we inftituted concerning those

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parts which are useful, and of which we know the use. The indication of contrivance, with respect to them, remains as it was before.

III. One atheistic way of replying to our obfervations upon the works of nature, and to the proofs of a Deity which we think that we perceive in them, is to tell us, that all which we see must neceffarily have had fome form, and that it might as well be its present form as any other. Let us now apply this answer to the eye, as we did before to the watch. Something or other must have occupied that place in the animal's head; must have filled up, we will fay, that focket: we will fay also, that it must have been of that fort of fubftance which we call animal fubftance, as flesh, bone, membrane, cartilage, &c.: but that it should have been an eye, knowing as we do what an eye comprehends, viz. that it should have confifted, first, of a series of transparent lenses (very different, by the bye, even in their substance, from the opaque materials of which the rest of the body is, in general at least, compofed; and with which the whole of its furface, this fingle portion of it excepted, is covered): fecondly, of a black cloth or canvass (the only membrane of the body which is

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black) fpread out behind these lenses, so as to receive the image formed by pencils of light. tranfmitted through them; and placed at the precife geometrical distance at which, and at which alone, a diftinct image could be formed, namely, at the concourfe of the refracted rays: thirdly, of a large nerve communicating between this membrane and the brain; without which the action of light upon the membrane, however modified by the organ, would be loft to the purposes of fenfation. That this fortunate conformation of parts fhould have been the lot, not of one individual out of many thousand individuals, like the great prize in a lottery, or like fome fingularity in nature, but the happy chance of a whole fpecies; nor of one species out of many thoufand fpecies, with which we are acquainted, but of by far the greatest number of all that exift; and that under varieties, not cafual or capricious, but bearing marks of being fuited to their respective exigences; that all this fhould have taken place, merely because fomething must have occupied thofe points in every animal's forehead; or, that all this fhould be thought to be accounted for, by the short anfwer, "that whatever was there must have

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had fome form or other," is too abfurd to be made more fo by any argumentation. We are not contented with this anfwer, we find no fatisfaction in it, by way of accounting for appearances of organization far fhort of thofe of the eye, such as we observe in foffil fhells, petrified bones, or other fubftances which bear the veftiges of animal or vegetable recrements, but which, either in respect of utility, or of the fituation in which they are dif covered, may feem accidental enough. It is no way of accounting even for these things, to fay that the ftone, for inftance, which is fhewn to us, (fuppofing the question to be. concerning a petrification,) must have contained fome internal conformation or other. Nor does it mend the answer to add, with respect to the fingularity of the conformation, that, after the event, it is no longer to be computed what the chances were againft it. This is always to be computed, when the question is whether an useful or imitative conformation be the produce of chance or not. I defire no greater certainty in reafoning, than that by which chance is excluded from the prefent difpofition of the natural world. Universal experience is against it. What does chance ever do for us? In the human

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human body, for inftance, chance, i, e. the ope ration of causes without defign, may produce: a wen, a wart, a mole, a pimple, but never an eye. Amongst inanimate fubftauces, a clod, a pebble, a liquid drop, might be; but never was a watch, a telescope, an organized. body of any kind, answering a valuable pur pofe by a complicated mechanifin, the effect of chance. In no affignable instance hath fuch a thing existed without intention: fome

where.

IV. There is another anfwer which has the fame effect as the refolving of things into chance; which anfwer would perfuade us to believe, that the eye, the animal to which it belongs, every other animal, every plant, indeed every organized body which we fee, are only fo many out of the poffible varieties and combinations of being, which the lapfe of infinite ages has brought into exiftence: that the prefent world is the relict of that variety; millions of other bodily forms and other species having perished, being by the defect of their conftitution incapable of preservation, or of continuance by generation. Now there is no foundation whatever for this conjecture in any thing which we obferve in the works of na

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