Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/439

 Rh enlarged the range of Facts in accordance with those on which Paley grounded this assertion.

In all the numerous examples of Design which we have selected from the various animal and vegetable remains, that occur in a fossil state, there is such a never-failing Identity in the fundamental principles of their construction, and such uniform adoption of analogous means, to produce various ends, with so much only of departure from one common type of mechanism, as was requisite to adapt each instrument to its own especial function, and to fit each Species to its peculiar place and office in the scale of created Beings, that we can scarcely fail to acknowledge in all these facts, a Demonstration of the Unity of the Intelligence, in which such transcendent Harmony originated; and we may almost dare to assert that neither Atheism nor Polytheism would ever have found acceptance in the World, had the evidences of high Intelligence and of Unity of Design, which are disclosed by modern discoveries in physical science, been fully known to the Authors, or the Abettors of Systems to which they are so diametrically opposed. "It is the same handwriting that we read, the same system and contrivance that we trace, the same unity of object, and relation to final causes, which we see maintained throughout, and constantly proclaiming the Unity of the great divine Original."

It has been stated in our Sixth Chapter, on primary stratified rocks, that Geology has rendered an important service to Natural Theology, in demonstrating by evidences peculiar to itself, that there was a time 'when none of the existing forms of organic beings had appeared upon our Planet, and that the doctrines of the derivation of living species either by Developement and Transmutation from other