generations, in all succeeding ages.  Now what can be more artful and more wonderful in matter of mechanism than such a preparation of an infinite number of individuals, all formed beforehand in one from which they are to spring?  Therefore the moulds are of no use to explain the generations of animals without supposing any art or skill.  For, on the contrary, moulds would argue a more artificial mechanism and more wonderful composition.

What is manifest and indisputable, independently from all the systems of philosophers, is that the fortuitous concourse of atoms never produces, without generation, in any part of the earth, any lions, tigers, bears, elephants, stags, bulls, sheep, cats, dogs, or horses.  These and the like are never produced but by the encounter of two of their kind of different sex.  The two animals that produce a third are not the true authors of the art that shines in the composition of the animal engendered by them.  They are so far from knowing how to perform that art, that they do not so much as know the composition or frame of the work that results from their generation.  Nay, they know not so much as any particular spring of it; having been no more than blind and unvoluntary instruments, made use of for the performance of a marvellous art, to which they are absolute strangers, and of which they are perfectly ignorant.  Now I would fain know whence comes that art, which is none of theirs?  What power and wisdom knows how to employ, for the performance of works of so ingenious and intricate a design, instruments so uncapable to know what they are doing, or to have any notion of it?  Nor does it avail anything to suppose that beasts are endowed with reason.  Let a man suppose them to be as rational as he pleases in other things, yet he must own, that in generation they have no share in the art that is conspicuous in the composition of the animals they produce.

Let us carry the thing further, and take for granted the most wonderful instances that are given of the skill and forecast of animals.  Let us admire, as much as you please, the certainty with which a hound takes a spring into a third way, as soon as he finds by his nose that the game he pursues has left no scent in the other two.  Let us admire the hind, who, they say, throws a good way off her young fawn, into some hidden place, that the hounds may not find him out by the scent of his strain.  Let us even admire the spider who with her cobwebs lays subtle snares to trap flies, and fall unawares upon them before they can disentangle themselves.  Let us also admire the hern, who, they say, puts his head under his wing, in order to hide his bill under his feathers, thereby to stick the breast of the bird of prey that stoops at him.  Let us allow the truth of all these wonderful instances of rationality; for all nature is full of such prodigies.  But what must we infer from them?  In good earnest, if we carefully examine the matter, we shall find