quantity of new and striking views of the animal economy; every step of our discoveries leading us to admire the design and care of the Creator.[27] We find, therefore, that the Divine Providence is, in fact, capable of extending itself adequately to an immense succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we can imagine or could previously have anticipated; and thus we may feel secure, so far as analogy can secure us, that the mere multitude of created objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of the Creator. 3. We may observe further, that, vast as are the parts and proportions of the universe, we still appear to be able to perceive that it is _finite_; the subordination of magnitudes and numbers and classes appears to have its limits. Thus, for any thing which we can discover, the sun is the largest body in the universe; and at any rate, bodies of the order of the sun are the largest of which we have any evidence: we know of no substance denser than gold, and it is improbable that one denser, or at least much denser, should ever be detected: the largest animals which exist in the sea and on the earth are almost certainly known to us. We may venture also to say, that the smallest animals which possess in their structure a clear analogy with larger ones, have been already seen. Many of the animals which the microscope detects, are as complete and complex in their organization as those of larger size: but beyond a certain point, they appear, as they become more minute, to be reduced to a homogeneity and simplicity of composition which almost excludes them from the domain of animal life. The smallest microscopical objects which can be supposed to be organic, are points,[28] or gelatinous globules,[29] or threads,[30] in which no distinct organs, interior or exterior, can be discovered. These, it is clear, cannot be considered as indicating an indefinite progression of animal life in a descending scale of minuteness. We can, mathematically speaking, conceive one of these animals as perfect and complicated in its structure as an elephant or an eagle, but we do not find it so in nature. It appears, on the contrary, in these objects, as if we were, at a certain point of magnitude, reaching the boundaries of the animal world. We need not here consider the hypotheses and opinions to which these ambiguous objects have given rise; but, without any theory, they tend to show that the subordination of organic life is finite on the side of the little as well as of the great.