Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    260/408 page 252
    there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. The natural, we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial. To adopt a com- parison more apt than dignified, we may be said to be placed here as we can conceive a set of insects to be in a garden of the old style. Our first un- assisted view is limited, and we perceive only the shrubs which appear capriciously scattered. But, our view at length extending and becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours placed sym- metrically, and that the whole is an assemblage of parts mutually reflective. It can scarcely be ne- cessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the origination of nature in some Power, of which man’s mind is a faint and humble repre- sentation. ‘The insects of the garden, supposing them to be invested with reasoning power, and aware how artificial are their own works, might of course very reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artificial object, the garden was the work of some maker or artificer. And so also must we conclude, when we attain a know- ledge of the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly the production of a
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