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dence. Their structure, their vessels and limbs, their adaptation to their situation, their food and habitations, were regulated in as beautiful and complete a manner as those of the largest and apparently most favoured animals. The smallest insects are as exactly finished, often as gaily ornamented, as the most graceful beast or the birds of brightest plumage. And when we seem to go out of the domain of the complex animal structure with which we are familiar, and come to animals of apparently more scanty faculties, and less developed powers of enjoyment and action, we still find that their faculties and their senses are in exact harmony with their situation and circumstances; that the wants which they have are provided for, and the powers which they possess called into activity. So that Müller, the patient and accurate observer of the smallest and most obscure microscopical animalcula, declares that all classes alike, those which have manifest organs, and those which have not, offer a vast quantity of new and striking views of the animal economy; every step of our discoveries leading us to admire the design and care of the Creator.* We find, therefore, that the Divine Providence is, in fact, capable of extending itself adequately to an immense succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we can image or could previously have anticipated; and thus we may

Müller, Infusoria, Preface.

feel secure, so far as analogy can secure us, that the mere multitude of created objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of the Creator.

3. We may observe further, that, vast as are the parts and proportions of the universe, we still appear to be able to perceive that it is finite; the subordination of magnitudes and numbers and classes appears to have its limits. Thus, for anything which we can discover, the sun is the largest body in the universe; and at any rate, bodies of the order of the sun are the largest of which we have any evidence: we know of no substances denser than gold and platinum, and it is improbable that any denser, or at least much denser, should ever be detected: the largest animals which exist in the sea and on the earth are almost certainly known to us. We may venture also to say, that the smallest animals which possess in their structure a clear analogy with larger ones, have been already seen. Many of the animals which the microscope detects, are as complete and complex in their organization as those of larger size but beyond a certain point, they appear, as they become more minute, to be reduced to a homogeneity and simplicity of composition which almost excludes them from the domain of animal life. The smallest microscopical objects which can be supposed to be organic, are points,* or

Monas. Müller. Cuvier.

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gelatinous globules, or threads, in which no distinct organs, interior or exterior, can be discovered. These, it is clear, cannot be considered as indicating an indefinite progression of animal life in a descending scale of minuteness. We can, mathematically speaking, conceive one of these animals as perfect and complicated in its structure as an elephant or an eagle, but we do not find it so in nature. It appears, on the contrary, in these objects, as if we were, at a certain point of magnitude, reaching the boundaries of the animal world. We need not here consider the hypothesis and opinions to which these ambiguous objects have given rise; but without any theory, they tend to show that the subordination of organic life is finite on the side of the little as well as of the great.

Some persons might, perhaps, imagine that a ground for believing the smallness of organized beings to be limited, might be found in what we know of the constitution of matter. If solids and fluids consist of particles of a definite, though exceeding smallness, which cannot further be divided or diminished, it is manifest that we have, in the smallness of these particles, a limit to the possible size of the vessels and organs of animals. The fluids which are secreted, and which circulate in the body of a mite, must needs consist of a vast number of particles, or

*Volvox.

+ Vibrio. Müller. Cuvier.

they would not be fluids: and an animal might be so much smaller than a mite, that its tubes could not contain a sufficient collection of the atoms of matter, to carry on its functions. We should, therefore, of necessity reach a limit of minuteness in organic life, if we could demonstrate that matter is composed of such indivisible atoms. We shall not, however, build anything on this argument; because, though the atomic theory is sometimes said to be proved, what is proved is, that chemical and other effects take place as if they were the aggregate of the effects of certain particles of different elements, the proportions of which particles are fixed and definite; but that any limit can be assigned to the smallness of these particles, has never yet been made out. We prefer, therefore, to rest the proof of the finite extent of animal life, as to size on the microscopical observations previously referred to.

Probably we cannot yet be said to have reached the limit of the universe with the power of our telescopes; that is, it does not appear that telescopes have yet been used, so powerful in exhibiting small stars, that we can assume that more powerful instruments would not discover new stars. Whether or no, however, this degree of perfection has been reached, we have no proof that it does not exist; if it were once obtained, we should have, with some approximation, the

limit of the universe as to the number of worlds, as we have already endeavoured to show we have obtained the limits with regard to the largeness and smallness of the inhabitants of our own world.

In like manner, although the discovery of new species in some of the kingdoms of nature has gone on recently with enormous rapidity, and to an immense extent; for instance in botany, where the species known in the time of Linnæus were about 10,000, and are now above 100,000; -there can be no doubt that the number of species and genera is really limited; and though a great extension of our knowledge is required to reach these limits, it is our ignorance merely, and not their non-existence, which removes them from us.

In the same way it would appear that the universe, so far as it is an object of our knowledge, is finite in other respects also. Now when we have once attained this conviction, all the oppressive apprehension of being overlooked in the government of the universe has no longer any rational source. For in the superintendence of a finite system of things, what is there which can appear difficult or overwhelming to a Being such as we must, from what we know, conceive the Creator to be? Difficulties arising from space, number, gradation, are such as we can conceive ourselves capable of overcoming, merely by an extension of our present faculties. Is it not then

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