Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n
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A29013
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Of the high veneration man's intellect owes to God, peculiarly for his wisedom and power by a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.
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1685
(1685)
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Wing B4009; ESTC R10996
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40,294
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119
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to see and the Hand is so well fram'd for a multitude of Mechanical uses that Aristotle thought sit to call it the Organ of Organs or Instrument of Instruments It ought therefore highly to recommend the Wisedom of the Great yotser hakkol Former of all things as the Scripture styles him that he has so fram'd each Particular part of a Man or other Animal as not to let the skill bestowed on that hinder him from making that part or member it self and every other neither bigger nor less nor in a word otherwise constituted than was most expedient for the completeness and welfare of the whole Animal Which manifests that this Great Artist had the whole Fabrick under his Eye at once and did at one View behold all that was best to be done in order to the completeness of the whole Animal as well as to that of each member and other part and admirably provided for them both at once Whereas many an excellent Artificer that is able to make a single Engine very complete may not be able to make it a Commodious part of a Complex or Aggregate of Engins As 't is not every one that can make a good Pump that can make a good Ship pump nor every Chymist that can build an Oven for a Bake house that can make one fit to be set up in a Ship and we see that our Pendulum Clocks that are moved with weights and go very regularly a-shore cannot yet be brought to perform their Office of constantly measuring of time when set up in a sayling Ship 17. IV. The fourth way by which God manifests his Wisedom in his Corporeal Creatures is their mutual usefulness to one another in a relation either of dependency or of coordination This serviceableness may be considered either as the parts of the Animal have a relation to one another and to the whole body they make up or as intire and distinct bodies have reference to or dependency on each other To the first sort of utility belong the uses of the parts of the Humane body for instance which are so fram'd that besides these publick Offices or Functions that some of them exercise for the good of the whole as the Stomach for concocting aliments the Brain for supplying Animal spirits to move the limbs and other parts the Kidneys to separate the superfluous Serum of the Bloud there are many other particular parts that have that subserviency to one another that no despicable portion of the Books of Anatomy is employ'd in the mention of them And divers Consents of parts and utilities that accrue from one to the other are farther discovered by Diseases which primarily affecting one part or member of the Body discover that this or that other part has a dependance on it or a particular relation to it though perhaps not formerly taken notice of To the second part of utility belong those parts that discriminate the Sexes of Animals which parts have such a relation one to another in the Male and the Female that 't is obvious they were made for the conjunction of both in order to the propagation of the Species I cannot here spend time to consider the fitness of the Distance and Situation of the Sun the obliquity of its Motion under the Ecliptick and especially the compensations that Nature makes by one thing for another the excess of whose qualities would else be noxious to men as the great heats and dryness that reign in many parts of the Torrid Zone and some neighbouring Climates would render those Countries barren and uninhabitable as the Ancients thought them if they were not kept from being so by the Etesians and the Trade-winds which blow regularly though not always the same way for a great part of the hottest seasons of the Year and are assisted by the length of the Nights by the Copious and lasting Rains that fall at set times by the greatness of the Rivers some of them periodically overflowing their banks to great distances and by the winds that in many places blow in the Night from the Land Seaward and in the Morning from the Sea towards the Land for these and some other such things do so moisten and refresh the Ground and contemperate the Air that in many of those Climates which the Ancients thought parch'd up and uninhabitable there are large Kingdoms and Provinces that are both fruitfull and Populous and divers of them very pleasant too But as I was saying I cannot stay to prosecute what might be represented to shew the usefulness of many of God's other sensible works to the Noblest kind of them Men. But I shall rather content my self by adding a few lines to point farther at the reference that God has been pleas'd to make many other things have to the welfare of Men and other Animals as we see that according to the usual course of Nature Lambs Kids and many other living Creatures are brought into the World at the Spring of the Year when tender Grass and other Nutritive plants are provided for their food And the like may be observ'd in the production of Silk-worms whose Eggs according to Natures institution are hatch'd when Mulbury Trees begin to Bud and put forth those leaves whereon these pretious insects are to feed the aliments being tender whilst the Worms themselves are so and growing more strong and substantial as the Insects increase in Vigour and Bulk 18. There is one thing which though it might perhaps have been more properly brought in before must not here be pretermitted For besides what was lately said of the excellent Fabrick of the bodies of Men and other Animals we may deservedly take notice how much more wonderfull than the structure of the grown body must be the contrivance of a Semen Animatum since all the future parts solid as well as soft and the functions and many of the Actions and those to be variable pro re nata of the Animal to be produc'd must be durably delineated and as it were couch'd in a little portion of matter that seems Homogeneous and is unquastionably sluid And that which much increases the Wonder is that one of these latent impressions or powers namely the Plastick or Prolifick is to lye dormant perhaps above thirty or forty Years and then to be able to produce many more such Engins as is the Animal it self I have hitherto among the Corporeal Works of God taken notice onely of those Productions of his Power and Wisedom that may be observ'd in the visible World So that I may be allowed to consider farther that not onely the Peripateticks but the generality of other Philosophers believe the World to be finite and though the Cartesians will not say it is so but chuse rather to call it indefinite yet as it is elsewhere shewn their Opinion is rather a well meant piece of modesty than a strict truth For in reality the World must every way have bounds and consequently be finite or it must not
under the Aequator does if the Earth turns about its own Axis move as swiftly as a Bullet shot out of a Cannon But if we chuse rather the Tychonian Hypothesis which makes the Firmament with all the vast Globes of Light that adorn it to move about their common Centre in 24 hours the Motions of the Celestial Matter must be allowed a far greater and indeed a scarce imaginable rapidity These things are mention'd that we may have the more enlarg'd Conceptions of the Power as well as Wisedom of the Great Creator who has both put so Wonderfull a quantity of Motion into the Universal Matter and maintains it therein and is able not onely to set bounds to the raging Sea and effectually say to it Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther and here shall thy proud Waves be stay'd but what is far more so to curb and moderate those stupendiously rapid Motions of the Mundane Globes and intercurrent Fluids that neither the unwealdiness of their Bulk nor Celerity of their Motions have made them exorbitate or fly out and this for many Ages during which no Watch for a few hours has gone so regularly The Sun for instance moving without swerving under the same Circular Line that is call'd the Ecliptick And if the Firmament it self whose Motion in the vulgar Hypothesis is by much the most rapid in the World do fail of exactly completing its revolution in 24 hours that retardation is so regulated that since Hipparchus's time who liv'd 2000 years ago the first Star in Aries which was then near the beginning of it is not yet come to the last degree of that Sign 12. After what hath been discoursed of the Power of God it remains that I say something about his Wisedom that being the Attribute to which those that have elevated understandings are wont to pay the Highest Veneration when they meet it even in Men where yet 't is still but very Imperfect The Wisedom of God which Saint Paul somewhere justly styles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 manifold or multifarious is express'd in two differing manners or degrees For sometimes it is so manifestly display'd in familiar Objects that even superficial and almost careless Spectators may take notice of it But there are many other things wherein the Treasures of Wisedom and Knowledge may be said to be hid lying so deep that they require an Intelligent and attentive Considerer to discover them But though I think I may be allowed to make this distinction yet I shall not solicitously confine my self to it because in several things both these Expressions of the Divine Wisedom may be clearly observ'd Those Objects of this Wisedom that we shall at this time consider are of two sorts the material and visible and the invisible and immaterial Creatures of God In the First of these whose aggregate or collection makes up the Corporeal World commonly call'd Vniverse I shall briefly take notice of the excellent Contrivance of particular bodies of the great variety and consequently number of them of their Symmetry as they are parts of the World and of the connexion and dependance they have in relation to one another And though under the two first of these heads I might as well as under the other two take notice of many inanimate bodies as well as of those that are endowed with vegetative and sensitive Souls as Naturalists commonly call them yet for Brevities sake I shall here take notice onely of that more perfect sort of living Creatures that we call Animals 13. I. The contrivance of every Animal and especially of a Humane Body is so curious and exquisite that 't is almost impossible for any Body that has not seen a dissection well made and Anatomically considered to imagine or conceive how much excellent Workmanship is display'd in that admirable Engine But of this having discours'd elsewhere more fully I shall here onely tell you in a word and 't is no Hyperbole that as St. Paul said on another occasion That the foolish things of God are wiser than Men and the weak things of God stronger than Men. So we may say that the meanest living Creatures of God's making are far more wisely contrived than the most excellent pieces of workmanship that Humane heads and hands can boast of And no Watch nor Clock in the World is any way comparable for exquisiteness of Mechanism to the body of even an Ass or a Frog 14. II. But God's Wisedom is recommended as well by the Variety and consequently the Number of the kinds of living Creatures as by the Fabrick of each of them in particular For the skill of Humane Architects and other Artists is very narrow and for the most part limited to one or to a few sorts of contrivements Thus many an Architect can build a House well that cannot build a Ship and as we daily see a man may be an excellent Clock-maker that could not make a good Watch and much less contrive well a Fouling-piece or a Wind-mill 15. But now the Great Author of Nature has not onely created four Principal sorts of living Engins namely Beasts Birds Fishes and Reptiles which differ exceedingly from one another as the several Regions or Stages where they were to act their parts required they should do but under each of these comprehensive Genders are compriz'd I know not how many subordinate Species of Animals that differ exceedingly from others of the same kind according to the Exigency of their Particular Natures For not onely the Fabrick of a Beast as a Lion is very differing from that of a Bird or a Fish as an Eagle or a Whale but in the same Species the Structure or Mechanism of particular Animals is very unlike Witness the difference between the Parts of those Beasts that chew the Cud and those that do not and between the Hog and the Hare especially in their Entrals and so between a Parrot and a Batt and likewise between a Whale a Star-fish a Lobster and an Oyster to mention now no other Instances And if with divers Philosophers both Ancient and Modern we admit Vegetables into the rank of living Creatures the Number of these being so great that above six thousand kinds of Vegetables were many years ago reckon'd up the manifold displays of the Divine Mechanism and so of its Wisedom will by that great Variety of living Engins be so much the more conspicuous 16. III. That which much enhances the excellent Contrivances to be met with in these Automata is the Symmetry of all the various parts that each of them consists of For an Animal though consider'd in his state of Intireness he is justly look'd upon as one Engine yet really this total Machine if I may so call it is a complex thing made up of several Parts which consider'd separately may pass each of them for a subordinate Engine excellently sitted for this or that Particular Use As an Eye is an admirable Optical Instrument to enable a Man