stances, by a union with which it is rendered useful?
What plant, what shrub, what tree has not organization and arrangement the
most perfect imaginable? What insect so minute that contains not, within
its almost invisible exterior, adjustment of part to part in the most
exact order throughout all its complicated system, infinitely transcending
the most ingenious productions of art, and the most appropriate adaptation
of all those parts to its peculiar mode of existence? Rising in the scale
of sensitive being, let us consider the beast of the forest, in whose
case, without microscopic aid, we have the subject more accessible. Is he
a beast of prey? Has the God of nature given him an instinctive thirst for
blood? Behold, then, his sharp-sighted organs of vision for descrying his
victim afar, his agile limbs for pursuit, his curved and pointed claws for
seizing and tearing his prey, his sharp-edged teeth for cutting through
its flesh, his firm jaws for gripping, crushing, and devouring it, and his
intestines for digesting raw flesh. But is he a graminivorous animal? Does
he subsist on grass and herb? Behold, then, his clumsy limbs and his
clawless hoofs, his blunt teeth and his herb-digesting stomach. So perfect
is the correspondence between one part and another; so exactly adapted are
all the parts to the same general objects; so wonderful is the harmony and
so definite and invariable the purpose obtaining throughout the whole,
that it is necessary to see but a footstep, or even a bone, to be able to
decide the nature and construction of the animal that imprinted that
footstep or that possessed that bone. Ascending still higher in the scale,
we come at last to man--man, the highest, noblest workmanship of God on
earth--the lord of this sphere terrene--for whose behoof all earthly things
exist. In common with all animals, he has that perfect adaptation of part
to part, and of all the parts to general objects, which demonstrate
consummate wisdom in the Cause which thus adapted them. His eyes are so
placed as to look the same way in which his feet are placed to walk, and
his hands to toil. His feet correspond with each other, being both placed
to walk in the direction, and with their corresponding sides towards one
another, without which he would hobble, even if he could walk at all. His
mouth is placed in the forepart of the head, by which it can receive food
and drink from the hands.

But the hands themselves--who can but a