These
propositions, thirty-one in number, might be called an analysis of
the qualities of the Infinite Mind exhibited in the realm of
organized and especially of animal being. Nothing but want of space
prevents our reproducing at full length the very careful
recapitulation to be found at the close of the chapter, or the
analysis to be found in the Table of Contents. With something more
of labor than the task of copying would have been, we have attempted
to compress the truths already crowded in these brief and pregnant
sentences into the still narrower compass of a few lines in our
straitened pages.
The harmony of the universe is a manifestation of illimitable
intellect, displaying itself in various modes of thought, as these
are shown in the characters and relations of organized beings: unity
of thought, manifesting itself independently of space, of time, of
known material agencies, of special form,--illustrated by repetition
of similar types in different circumstances, by identities, or
partial resemblances, or serial connections, found under varying
conditions of being; power of expressing the same idea in innumerable
forms, as in those instances of essential identity of parts in the
midst of formal differences known as _special homologies_; power of
combination, as in the adjustment of organized beings to each other
and to the inorganic world, or in the harmonious allotment of the
most varied gifts to different beings; definite recognition of time
and space, as in the life of individuals, of species, in the stages
of growth, in the geographical limitation of types; prescience and
omniscience, as shown in the _prophetic_ types of earlier geological
ages; omnipresence, by the adjustment of the whole series of animal
organisms to the various parts of the planet they inhabit.
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