Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.Adams, George
Science
Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.
Adams, George
Insects -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800
“After an attentive examination of the nature and fabric of both the
least and largest animals, I cannot,” says the great and excellent
Swammerdam, “but allow the less an equal, perhaps a superior degree of
dignity; whoever duly considers the conduct and instinct of the one,
with the manners and actions of the other, must acknowledge, that they
are all under the direction and controul of a supreme and particular
intelligence; which, as in the largest it extends beyond the limits of
our comprehension, escapes our researches in the smallest. If, while we
dissect with care the larger animals, we are filled with wonder at the
elegant disposition of their limbs, the inimitable order of their
muscles, and the regular direction of their veins, arteries, and
nerves, to what an height is our astonishment raised, when we discover
all the parts arranged in the least, and in the same regular manner! How
is it possible but we must stand amazed when we reflect, that those
little animals, whose bodies are smaller than the point of the
dissecting knife, have muscles, veins, arteries, and every other part
common to the larger animals? Creatures so very diminutive, that our
hands are not delicate enough to manage, or our eyes sufficiently acute
to see them.”
The subserviency of the several beings in the visible creation to one
another; the order in which each of them appears in that appointed
season, when only it can be conducive to the purposes of the rest; and
the preservation of a sufficient number of every species, amidst the
immense havoc that reigns throughout, are, among other things, proofs of
the amazing and incomprehensible wisdom by which they were all formed.
With what pleasure does the mind, accustomed to look up from effects to
their causes, from created beings to the GREAT SOURCE OF BEING, view
that unbounded beneficence, which leaves not the smallest space, capable
of supporting existence of any kind, unplanted with them. There is
hardly any portion of matter, or the least drop of fluid naturally found
on the surface of the earth, that is not inhabited by multitudes of
animals; the subterraneous regions are peopled with their minute
inhabitants, and the abyss of the sea, where no human eye can penetrate,
abounds with animated beings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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