slender to rise
by their own strength, learned by degrees to adhere to their neighbours,
either by putting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the
vine, or by spiral contortions like the honeysuckle, or by growing upon
them like the mistleto, and taking nourishment from their barks, or by
only lodging or adhering on them and deriving nourishment from the air
as tillandsia.

"Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament was originally
different from that of each tribe of animals above described? And that
the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different
from the other? Or as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with
vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many
families of these animals, long before other families of them, shall we
conjecture _that one and the same kind of living filament is and has
been the cause of all organic life_?[182]

. . . . . .

"The late Mr. David Hume in his posthumous works places the powers of
generation much above those of our boasted reason, and adds, that reason
can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of
generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having
observed that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of
organic recrements, as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble,
from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone,
ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all of which have been
first produced by generation, or by the secretion of organic life; he
concludes that the world itself might have been generated rather than
created; that it might have been gradually produced from very small
beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles,
rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fire.
What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great Architect!
The Cause of causes! Parent of parents! Ens entium!"[183]

FOOTNOTES:

[169] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 484.

[170] Ibid. p. 485.

[171] Ibid. p. 493.

[172] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 494.

[173] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 497.

[174] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 498.

[175] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 500.

[176] Ibid. p. 501.

[177] Ibid. p. 502.

[178] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 503.

[179] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 505.

[180] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.

[181] 'Voyage to China,' p. 113.

[182] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 511.

[183] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i.