Lower grades of animals partake of many qualities in common with man.  In some they are deficient; in others they are superior.  Some animals are possessed of all but reason, and even in that, the highest of them come very little short of the lowest of the human species.  If they have not reason, they possess an instinct which nearly approaches it.  These qualities dwindle down gradually thro the various orders and varieties of animated nature, to the lowest grade of animalculae, a multitude of which may inhabit a single drop of water; or to the zoophytes and lythophytes, which form the connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdom; as the star-fish, the polypus, and spunges.  Then strike off into another kingdom, and observe the laws vegetable life.  Mark the tall pine which has grown from a small seed which sent forth its root downwards and its trunk upwards, drawing nourishment from earth, air, and water, till it now waves its top to the passing breeze, a hundred feet above this dirty earth:  or the oak or olive, which have maintained their respective positions a dozen centuries despite the operations of wind and weather, and have shed their foliage and their seeds to propagate their species and extend their kinds to different places.  While a hundred generations have lived and died, and the country often changed masters, they resist oppression, scorn misrule, and retain rights and privileges which are slowly encroached upon by the inroads of time, which will one day triumph over them, and they fall helpless to the earth, to submit to the chemical operations which shall dissolve their very being and cause them to mingle with the common dust, yielding their strength to give life and power to other vegetables which shall occupy their places.[10] Or mark the living principle in the “sensitive plant,” which withers at every touch, and suffers long ere it regains its former vigor.

Descend from thence, down thro the various gradations of vegetable life, till you pass the narrow border and enter the mineral world.  Here you will see displayed the same sublime principle, tho in a modified degree.  Minerals assume different shapes, hues and relations; they increase and diminish, attach and divide under various circumstances, all the while retaining their identity and properties, and exerting their abilities according to the means they possess, till compelled to yield to a superior power, and learn to submit to the laws which operate in every department of this mutable world.

Every thing acts according to the ability God has bestowed upon it; and man can do no more.  He has authority over all things on earth, and yet he is made to depend upon all.  His authority extends no farther than a privilege, under wholesome restrictions, of making the whole subservient to his real good.  When he goes beyond this, he usurps a power which belongs not to him, and the destruction of his happiness