in the forms, with a real and perpetual revolution or motion of parts,
affords a plausible, if not a true solution of the difficulty.

It is in vain, therefore, to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals
or vegetables, and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain
know, how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted? Do
we not find, that it immediately perishes whenever this adjustment
ceases, and that its matter corrupting tries some new form? It happens
indeed, that the parts of the world are so well adjusted, that some
regular form immediately lays claim to this corrupted matter: and if it
were not so, could the world subsist? Must it not dissolve as well as the
animal, and pass through new positions and situations, till in great, but
finite succession, it falls at last into the present or some such order?

It is well, replied CLEANTHES, you told us, that this hypothesis was
suggested on a sudden, in the course of the argument. Had you had leisure
to examine it, you would soon have perceived the insuperable objections
to which it is exposed. No form, you say, can subsist, unless it possess
those powers and organs requisite for its subsistence: some new order or
economy must be tried, and so on, without intermission; till at last some
order, which can support and maintain itself, is fallen upon. But
according to this hypothesis, whence arise the many conveniences and
advantages which men and all animals possess? Two eyes, two ears, are not
absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the species. Human race might
have been propagated and preserved, without horses, dogs, cows, sheep,
and those innumerable fruits and products which serve to our satisfaction
and enjoyment. If no camels had been created for the use of man in the
sandy deserts of AFRICA and ARABIA, would the world have been dissolved?
If no lodestone had been framed to give that wonderful and useful
direction to the needle, would human society and the human kind have been