that way the progress acquired in the
composition of the organization and in the forms and the diversity
of the parts has been preserved.

"5. That with the aid of sufficient time, of circumstances which
have been necessarily favorable, of changes that all parts of the
surface of the globe have successively undergone in their
condition--in a word, with the power that new situations and new
habits have in modifying the organs of bodies endowed with life--all
those which now exist have been imperceptibly formed such as we see
them.

"6. Finally, that according to a similar order of things, living
beings, having undergone each of the more or less great changes in
the condition of their organization and of their parts, that which
is designated as a species among them has been insensibly and
successively so formed, can have only a relative constancy in its
condition, and cannot be as ancient as nature.

"But, it will be said, when it is necessary to suppose that, with
the aid of much time and of an infinite variation in circumstances,
nature has gradually formed the different animals that we know,
would we not be stopped in this supposition by the sole
consideration of the admirable diversity which we observe in the
instinct of different animals, and by that of the marvels of all
sorts which their different kinds of industry present?

"Will one dare to carry the spirit of system (_porter l'esprit de
systeme_) to the point of saying that it is nature, and she alone,
which creates this astonishing diversity of means, of ruses, of
skill, of precautions, of patience, of which the industry of animals
offers us so many examples! What we observe in this respect in the
class of insects alone, is it not a thousand times more than is
necessary to compel us to perceive that the limits of the power of
nature by no means permit her herself to produce so many marvels,
and to force the most obstinate philosophy to recognize that here
the will of the supreme author of all things has been necessary, and
has alone sufficed to cause the existence of so many admirable
things?

"Without doubt one would be rash, or rather wholly unreasonable, to
pretend to assign limits to the power of the first author of all
things; and by that alone no one can dare to say that this infinite
power has not been able to will that which nature herself shows us
she has willed.