The cases last referred to afford good examples of a simplification of principle, which may be fairly urged as a proof of Presiding Intelligence in the arrangement of the organized body, though we see nothing but the indications of this symmetry and order, and no positive perception of a use or end answered. To look only to such purposes, or practical contrivances, is to take far too narrow a view of final causes. We should learn to trace design equally, perhaps even more clearly, in cases where we perceive no end or practical design, but where the influence of ordaining intelligence is displayed solely in the continually increasing simplicity of principle and symmetry of arrangement, which are constantly opening upon us in every successive advance of discovery.

It has been admirably observed by the distinguished physiologist just referred to, "As philosophy advances the properties of matter are perpetually found to be fewer and simpler; which the creative wisdom so combines and directs as to produce the most diversified, and, at first sight, opposite results*. The disclosure of such a principle alone seems to me to constitute the highest kind of proof of presiding and ordaining Intelligence. I have above referred to some instances in support of it; but I must here add one more case, which places the argument in a peculiarly striking point of view, derived from the

* Introductory Lecture at King's College, 1834, p. 16.

researches of modern physiology; and which I cannot express better than in the words of the same author*:

"One common commencement is there for the development of all the families of vertebral animals. There is a period after its commencement, when the frame in outline being already distinct, the class even of the individual is indistinguishable, whether it be fish, reptile, bird, mammiferous animal, or even man. For a time, these all march parallel, alike in all things, the highest not differing from the lowest. For example: the fish, the lowest in the scale, is formed to breathe the waters; for this purpose, in its throat there must be openings made, to give passage to the water through its gills. These openings are called branchial apertures. The reptile has no need of these openings; but they are formed in it. In the bird they would serve no use; but they are there. In the mammiferous animal again, in man, they are useless, but they are still present. Respiratory apertures in the neck, with a single heart, and a corresponding distribution of the aorta, form the early undistinguished and undistinguishing type stamped on the whole range of vertebrata.

"But now a difference begins. This character of organization is to be permanent in fish. In fish, therefore, it now expands and amplifies itself. At the corresponding period, in the higher animals, it

* Ibid. p. 20..

fades and disappears; shrinking, while a higher order of organization supersedes it, and parts are developed which in the fish appear not. This law holds throughout the economy. There is one common type for the brain at its first production, which remains permanent in the lowest tribes, but is improved upon by fresh developments in each above. Thus the brain of man at first resembles that of a fish, then of a reptile and bird: finally, it becomes the mammiferous brain, then human."

On contemplating so truly astonishing a train of development as is here unfolded, the reflection which presents itself to the mind may, in the first instance, be very different from that which is induced on a more enlarged consideration of the

case.

In the gradual stages of the process here unveiled, we perceive organs bestowed apparently without discrimination as to the future destiny of the creature: adapted in many to no perceptible end; in fact, positively useless and superfluous. All notion of final causes seems excluded; and all idea of adjustment to a purpose, violated. Even the suppression of a useless organ, and the substitution or super-induction of one which is useful, seems a circuitous and unnecessarily complex process of obtaining the end ultimately accomplished.

But when we look at the regularity of the system on which all this is planned; when we consider that these useless or abortive organs are, in all cases,

constructed on one simple model; when we observe the precise order in which they disappear, exactly in accordance with the destined difference of function in the different species; when we trace the undeviating scheme on which the new modifications are respectively super-induced; when we regard the determinate scale, according to which the whole process is unalterably carried on;-then we shall be urged with an increasing and accumulating force of conviction, to the conclusion that all this arrangement, however apparently complex, is, in reality, an astonishing instance of conformity to laws of the most recondite simplicity: that every step in the process, however apparently superfluous, is in strict accordance with a great principle of uniformity: that every stage in the transformation, however, in first appearance, destitute of direction to a purpose of utility, yet, if it answer no other, has its direct application in filling up a place in the universal harmony and incomparable unity of design, which pervades all organized nature. The very singularity of the provision, well considered, evinces the enlarged preservation of analogy: the very objection and difficulty of the case is converted into an evidence in favour of the argument from symmetry.

But this is not all: an extension of the same principle, nearly obvious when once it has been made known, enables us entirely to refute one of the most plausible objections, and remove one of the

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most formidable difficulties, which previously opposed itself as a positive exception to the harmony of design in the animal organization; the existence of cases of malformation. These are now understood, by the aid of the principle just adverted to, to be in fact, due not to any disordering interruption, not to any anomalous interfering cause, but simply to a deficiency in power to carry on the process of development; which is therefore merely arrested at an imperfect stage*.

Proximate Causes compared with Fixed Laws.

THE distinction which has been before drawn between physical and moral causation, and the relation of cause and effect, may tend, in no small degree, to remove a difficulty sometimes felt in the estimate of the proofs of creative wisdom and power supplied by the contemplation of organized life as compared with those derived from the study of the heavenly bodies. In the former case, the production of animal and vegetable life is observed to be always in connexion with a proximate material cause. the latter we can conceive no material cause of the existence and motions of the planetary system. Hence it has been noticed that the former class of

In

* For an explanation of these cases (of which my limits will not allow the insertion,) the reader is referred to the same Introductory Lecture, p. 21.