SECT.  XXVI.  Of Generation.

What is more admirable than the multiplication of animals?  Look upon the individuals: no animal is immortal.  Everything grows old, everything passes away, everything disappears, everything, in short, is annihilated.  Look upon the species: everything subsists, everything is permanent and immutable, though in a constant vicissitude.  Ever since there have been on earth men that have taken care to preserve the memory of events, no lions, tigers, wild boars, or bears, were ever known to form themselves by chance in caves or forests.  Neither do we see any fortuitous productions of dogs or cats.  Bulls and sheep are never born of themselves, either in stables, folds, or on pasture grounds.  Every one of those animals owes his birth to a certain male and female of his species.

All those different species are preserved much the same in all ages.  We do not find that for three thousand years past any one has perished or ceased; neither do we find that any one multiplies to such an excess as to be a nuisance or inconveniency to the rest.  If the species of lions, bears, and tigers multiplied to a certain excessive degree, they would not only destroy the species of stags, bucks, sheep, goats, and bulls, but even get the mastery over mankind, and unpeople the earth.  Now who maintains so just a measure as never either to extinguish those different species, or never to suffer them to multiply too fast?

But this continual propagation of every species is a wonder with which we are grown too familiar.  What would a man think of a watchmaker who should have the art to make watches, which, of themselves, should produce others ad infinitum in such a manner that two original watches should be sufficient to multiply and perpetuate their species over the whole earth?  What would he say of an architect that should have the skill to build houses, which should build others, to renew the habitations of men, before the first should decay and be ready to fall to the ground?  It is, however, what we daily see among animals.  They are no more, if you please, than mere machines, as watches are.  But, after all, the Author of these machines has endowed them with a faculty to reproduce or perpetuate themselves ad infinitum by the conjunction of both sexes.  Affirm, if you please, that this generation of animals is performed either by moulds or by an express configuration of every individual; which of these two opinions you think fit to pitch upon, it comes all to one; nor is the skill of the Artificer less conspicuous.  If you suppose that at every generation the individual, without being cast into a mould, receives a configuration made on purpose, I ask, who it is that manages and directs the configuration of so compounded a machine, and which argues so much art and industry?  If, on the contrary, to avoid acknowledging any art in the case you suppose that everything is determined by the moulds, I go back to the moulds themselves, and ask, who is it that prepared them?  In my opinion they are still greater matter of wonder than the very machines which are pretended to come out of them.

Therefore let who will suppose that there were moulds in the animals that lived four thousand years ago, and affirm, if he pleases, that those moulds were so inclosed one within another ad infinitum, that there was a sufficient number for all the generations of those four thousand years; and that there is still a sufficient number ready prepared for the formation of all the animals that shall preserve their species in all succeeding ages.  Now, these moulds, which, as I have observed, must have all the configuration of the animal, are as difficult to be explained or accounted for as the animals themselves, and are besides attended with far more unexplicable wonders.  It is certain that the configuration of every individual animal requires no more art and power than is necessary to frame all the springs that make up that machine; but when a man supposes moulds: first, he must affirm that every mould contains in little, with unconceivable niceness, all the springs of the machine itself.  Now, it is beyond dispute that there is more art in making so compound a work in little than in a larger bulk.  Secondly, he must suppose that every mould, which is an individual prepared for a first generation, contains distinctly within itself other moulds contained within one another ad infinitum, for all possible 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 that they prove too much.  Shall we say that animals are more rational than we?  Their instinct has undoubtedly more certainty than our conjectures.  They have learnt neither logic nor geometry, neither have they any course or method of improvement, or any science.  Whatever they do is done of a sudden without study, preparation, or deliberation.  We commit blunders and mistakes every hour of the day after we have a long while argued and consulted together; whereas animals, without any reasoning or premeditation, perform every hour what seems to require most discernment, choice, and exactness.  Their instinct is in many things infallible; but that word instinct is but a fair name void of sense.  For what can an instinct more just, exact, precise, and certain than reason itself mean but a more perfect reason?  We must therefore suppose a wonderful reason and understanding either in the work or in the artificer; either in the machine or in him that made it.  When, for instance, I find that a watch shows the hours with such exactness as surpasses my knowledge, I presently conclude that if the watch itself does not reason, it must have been made by an artificer who, in that particular, reasoned better and had more skill than myself.  In like manner, when I see animals, who every moment perform actions that argue a more certain art and industry than I am master of, I immediately conclude that such marvellous art must necessarily be either in the machine or in the artificer that framed it.  Is it in the animal himself?  But how is it possible he should be so wise and so infallible in some things?  And if this art is not in him, it must of necessity be in the Supreme Artificer that made that piece of work, just as all the art of a watch is in the skill of the watchmaker.