room. It is the same in nature. In the works of nature we trace mechanism; and this alone proves contrivance but living, active, moving, productive nature, proves also the exertion of a power at the centre; for, wherever the power resides may be denominated the centre.

The intervention and disposition of what are called "second causes," fall under the same observation. This disposition is or is not mechanism, according as we can or cannot trace it by our senses and means of examination. That is all the difference there is; and it is a difference which respects our faculties, not the things themselves. Now, where the order of second causes is mechanical, what is here said of mechanism strictly applies to it. But it would be always mechanism (natural chymistry, for instance, would be mechanism) if our senses were acute enough to descry it. Neither mechanism, therefore, in the works of nature, nor the intervention of what are called second causes, (for I think that they are the same thing,) excuses the necessity of an agent distinct from both.

If, in tracing these causes, it be said, that we find certain general properties of matter which have nothing in them that bespeaks intelligence, I answer, that still the managing of these properties, the pointing and directing them to the uses which we see made of them, demands intelligence in the highest degree. For example: suppose animal secretions to be elective attractions, and that such

and such attractions universally belong to such and such substances; in all which there is no. intellect concerned; still the choice and collocation of these substances, the fixing upon right substances, and disposing them in right places, must be an act of intelligence. What mischief would follow, were there a single transposition of the secretory organs; a single mistake in arranging. the glands which compose them!

There may be many second causes, and many courses of second causes, one behind another, between what we observe of nature and the Deity: but there must be intelligence somewhere; there must be more in nature than what we see; and, amongst the things unseen, there must be an intelligent, designing author. The philosopher beholds with astonishment the production of things around him. Unconscious particles of matter take their stations, and severally arrange themselves in an order, so as to become collectively plants or animals, i. e. organized bodies, with parts bearing strict and evident relation to one another, and to the utility of the whole: and it should seem that these particles could not move in any other way than as they do; for they testify not the smallest sign of choice, or liberty, or discretion. There may be particular intelligent beings guiding these motions in each case; or they may be the result of trains of mechanical dispositions, fixed beforehand by an intelligent appointment, and

kept in action by a power at the centre. But, in either case, there must be intelligence.

The minds of most men are fond of what they call a principle, and of the appearance of simplicity, in accounting for phenomena. Yet this principle, this simplicity, resides merely in the name; which name, after all, comprises perhaps under it, a diversified, multifarious, or progressive operation, distinguishable into parts. The power in organized bodies, of producing bodies like themselves, is one of these principles. Give a philosopher this, and he can get on. But he does not reflect, what this mode of production, this principle (if such he choose to call it) requires; how much it presupposes; what an apparatus of instruments, some of which are strictly mechanical, is necessary to its success; what a train it includes of operations and changes, one succeeding another, one related to another, one ministering to another; all advancing, by intermediate, and frequently, by sensible steps, to their ultimate result! Yet, because the whole of this complicated action is wrapped up in a single term, generation, we are to set it down as an elementary principle; and to suppose, that when we have resolved the things which we see into this principle, we have sufficiently accounted for their origin, without the necessity of a designing, intelligent Creator. The truth is, generation is not a principle, but a process. We might as well call the casting of metals a

principle; we might, so far as appears to me, as well call spinning and weaving principles: and then, referring the texture of cloths, the fabric of muslins and calicoes, the patterns of diapers and damasks, to these, as principles, pretend to dispense with intention, thought, and contrivance, on the part of the artist; or to dispense, indeed, with the necessity of any artist at all, either in the manufacturing of the article, or in the fabrication of the machinery by which the manufacture was carried on.

And after all, how, or in what sense, is it true, that animals produce their like? A butterfly, with a proboscis instead of a mouth, with four wings and six legs, produces a 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 implements 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 deviations 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 discoverable in those bodies, for which it gives us no contriver, offers no account whatever; but also by the farther consideration, that things generated possess a clear relation to things not generated. If it were merely one part of a generated 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 granivorous animals to the plants or seeds upon which they feed, it might be contended, that the whole of this correspondency was attributable to generation, the common origin from which these substances proceeded. But what shall we say to agreements which exist between things generated 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