existence, with
everything requisite even to the hatching, and likewise to every part of
its progress after hatching, until it becomes a bird, or winged animal,
in the form of its parent stock. A farther attention to the nature and
quality of the form cannot fail to cause astonishment in the
contemplative mind; to observe in the least as well as in the largest
kinds, yea, in the invisible as in the visible, that is, in small
insects, as in fowls or great beasts, how they are all endowed with
organs of sense, such as seeing, smelling, tasting, touching; and also
with organs of motion, such as muscles, for they fly and walk; and
likewise with viscera, around the heart and lungs, which are actuated by
the brains: that the commonest insects enjoy all these parts of
organization is known from their anatomy, as described by some writers,
especially SWAMMERDAM in his Books of Nature. Those who ascribe all
things to nature do indeed see such things; but they think only that
they are so, and say that nature produces them: and this they say in
consequence of having averted their minds from thinking about the
Divine; and those who have so averted their minds, when they see the
wonderful things in nature, cannot think rationally, and still less
spiritually; but they think sensually and materially, and in this case
they think in and from nature, and not above it, in like manner as those
do who are in hell; differing from beasts only in this respect, that
they have rational powers, that is, they are capable of understanding,
and thereby of thinking otherwise, if only they are willing. Those who
have averted themselves from thinking about the Divine, when they see
the wonderful things in nature, and thereby become sensual, do not
consider that the sight of the eye is so gross that it sees several
small insects as one confused mass; when yet each of them is organized
to feel and to move itself, consequently is endowed with fibres and
vessels, also with a little heart, pulmonary pipes, small viscera, and
brains; and that the contexture of these parts consists of the purest
principles in nature, and corresponds to some life, by virtue of which
their minutest parts are distinctly acted upon. Since the sight of the
eye is so gross that several of such insects, with the innumerable
things in each, appear to it as a small confused mass, and yet those who
are sensual, think and judge from that sight, it is evident how gross
their minds are, an