Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/106

64 for us, that we might justly claim a peculiar right in him above all other Creatures. When we observe his patient service he does us at the Plough, Cart, or under the Pack-saddle, his speed upon the high-way in matters of importance, his docibleness and desire of glory and praise, and consequently his notable atchievements in War, where he will snap the Spears apieces with his teeth, and pull his Riders Enemy out of the Saddle; and then that he might be able to perform all this labour with more ease, that his Hoofs are made so fit for the Art of the Smith and that round armature of Iron he puts upon them, it is a very hard thing not to acknowledge, that this so congruous contrivance of things was really from a Principle of Wisdome and Counsel.

6. There is also another consideration of Animals and their Usefulness, in removing those Evils we are pester'd with by reason of the abundance of some other hurtful Animals, such as are Mice, and Rats, and the like; and to this end the Cat, is very serviceable. And there is in the West-Indies a Beast in the form of a Bear, which Cardan calls Ursus Formicarius, whose very business it is to eat up all the Ants, which some parts of that Quarter of the World are sometimes excessively plagued withall.

We might adde also sundry Examples of living creatures that not onely bear a singular good affection to Mankind, but are also fierce Enemies to those that, are very hurtful and cruel to Man: and such are the Lizard, an Enemy to the Serpent; the Dolphin, to the Crocodile; the Horse, to the Bear; the Elephant, to the Dragon, &c. But I lift not to insist upon these things.

 

I, 1. The Beauty of several brute Animals. 2. The goodly Stateliness of the Horse. 3. That the Beauty of Animals argues their Creation from an Intellectual Principle. 4. The difference of Sexes a Demonstration of Providence. 5. That this difference is not by Chance. 6. An Objection answered concerning the Eele. 7. Another answered, taken from the consideration of the same careful provision of difference of Sexes in viler Animals. 8. Of Fishes and Birds being Oviparous. 9. Of Birds building their Nests and hatching their Eggs. 10. An Objection answered concerning the Ostrich. 11. That the Homogeneity of that Crystalline liquor which is the immediate Matter of the generation of Animals implies a Substance Immaterial or Incorporeal in Animals thus generated. 12. An Answer to an Elusion of the foregoing Argument.

Return now to what I proposed first, the Beauty of living Creatures: which though the course-spirited Atheist will not take notice of, as relishing nothing but what is subservient to his Tyranny or Lust; yet I think it undeniable but that there is comely Symmetry and Beautifulness in sundry living Creatures, a tolerable Proportion of 