"This being so, if I discover that nature herself brings about or
causes all the wonders just cited; that she creates the
organization, the life, even feeling; that she multiplies and
diversifies, within limits which are not known to us, the organs and
faculties of organic bodies the existence of which she sustains or
propagates; that she has created in animals by the single way of
_need_, which establishes and directs the habits, the source of all
actions, from the most simple up to those which constitute
_instinct_, industry, finally reason, should I not recognize in this
power of nature--that is to say, of existing things--the execution
of the will of its sublime author, who has been able to will that it
should have this power? Shall I any the less wonder at the
omnipotence of the power of the first cause of all things, if it has
pleased itself that things should be thus, than if by so many
(separate) acts of his omnipotent will he should be occupied and
occupy himself still continually with details of all the special
creations, all the variations, and all the developments and
perfections, all the destructions and all the renewals--in a word,
with all the changes which are in general produced in things which
exist?

"But I intend to prove in my 'Biologie' that nature possesses in her
_faculties_ all that is necessary to have to be able herself to
produce that which we admire in her works; and regarding this
subject I shall then enter into sufficient details which I am here
obliged to omit.[173]

"However, it is still objected that all we see stated regarding the
state of living bodies are unalterable conditions in the
preservation of their form, and it is thought that all the animals
whom history has transmitted to us for two or three thousand years
have always remained the same, and have lost nothing nor acquired
anything in the perfecting of their organs and in the form of their
parts.

"While this apparent stability has for a long time been accepted as
true, it has just been attempted to establish special proofs in a
report on the collections of natural history brought from Egypt by
the citizen Geoffroy."

Quotes three paragraphs in which the reporters (Cuvier and Geoffroy
St. Hilaire) say that the mummied animals of Thebes and Memphis are
perfectly similar to those of to-day. Then he goes on to say:

"I have seen them, these animals,