upon; but the facts which we have given and hinted at are at once so striking and so conclusive, as to leave no doubt and no necessity for further proof of the preeminence of the law which they indicate. II. In looking over the world of animal and vegetable forms there is nothing more remarkable than the continual sacrifice of strength to beauty, and of quantity or bulk to symmetry and shapeliness. Use seems postponed to appearance, and order, attitude and elegance take rank of quantity in the forms of things. I suppose that the law under consideration determines these conditions of structure; and that the beauty to which the sacrifice is credited, as an end and object, is only an incident; and, that the pleasure derived arises upon the felt correspondence of such forms with our faculties, innately adjusted to the harmonies of this universal law—in other words—that there is an intrinsic force of essence which compels organization, limits its dimensions, and determines its figure, and so, all substances take shape and volume from a law higher and more general than individual use and efficiency. Beauty, being but the name for harmony between faculty and object, may well serve as a rule of criticism, but the efficient cause which determines form lies deeper; it lies, doubtless, in the necessary relation of organization and essence—structure and use—appearance and office—making one the correspondent and exponent of the other in the innermost philosophy of signs. The abrogation of a rule, and departure from an established method of conformation, belonging to a whole class of natural beings, in order to attain the forms and order of arrangement of another class into whose higher style of constitution the lower has been somewhat advanced, as in the case of the elephant; and, the clear evidence that mechanical perfection is everywhere in the human mechanism subordinated to a law of configuration, which has respect to another standard and a higher necessity—each, in its own way, demonstrates that form is not only a necessity of mechanics, but is still more eminently an essential condition of all substance. Facts from these sources hold a sort of raking position in the array of our argument, but the multitude and variety of examples which muster regularly under the rule are, of themselves, every way adequate to maintain it. III. Our proposition (to vary the statement of it) is, that form, or figure, and, doubtless, dimension also, have a fixed relation to the special qualities and characters of beings and things, and that it is not indifferent in the grand economy of creation whether they be put into their present shapes or into some other; but, on the contrary, the whole matter of configuration and dimension is determined by laws which arise out of the nature of things.