114 ON THE LATEST FORM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 
for the higher education of man, or for the attainment of moral as well as physical 
ends. 
The same remark is applicable for the explanation of another difficulty mentioned by 
Mr. Darwin. He objects that “ all the contrivances in nature are not, as far as we can 
judge, absolutely perfect, and some of them are even abhorrent to our ideas of fitness.” 
(p. 409.) And he cites, as instances, the sting of the bee causing the bee’s own death, 
the hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters, and the ichneumonide that 
feed within the bodies of live caterpillars. He might as well have adduced the exist- 
ence of all the Carnivora, man himself included, together with the frequent occur- 
rence of pain and death. We are not wont to hear the old problem respecting the 
existence of evil alleged as an argument in favor of a novel speculation in zoólogy. 
But when certain arrangements are declared to be imperfect or unfit, we have a right to 
ask by what standard they have been tried. Perfect for what end? Fit for what 
purpose? If the only conceivable intention were to guard the life of every individual 
bee, perhaps a more effectual means might have been discovered than that of furnishing 
it with any sting at all. Many insects exist in vast numbers that have no such weapon. 
Human knowledge, also, is so far from comprehending the whole plan of creation, and 
all the purposes of its Author, that it seems reasonable to admit the evidences of | 
design where they are so obvious that they cannot be overlooked, and to refer all other 
cases to our limited means of observation and the imperfection of our faculties. The 
difficulty, moreover, may be retorted upon the advocates of the Development Theory. 
As Natural Selection preserves only the useful, and kills out all worthless and noxious’ 
Variations, how comes it to have left, in a weapon otherwise so perfect, this one fatal 
defect, that it cannot be once used without causing the death of its owner? 
The necessities of his theory compel Mr. Darwin to maintain that the most complex 
instincts, as well as the nicest adaptations of structure, can have been produced only 
* by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous slight, yet profitable, variations." 
But he has seemingly failed to observe that instinct and structure are nicely correlated 
to each other, and must be so correlated, or the animal would perish. Consequently, 
the variations of structure and instinct must have been simultaneous and accurately 
adjusted to each other, as a modification in the one, without an immediate correspond- 
ing change in the other, would have been fatal. He has also failed to remember, that ` 
the highest and most complex instincts are generally found in very low structural 
forms; for instance, among bees, ants, and spiders, rather than among vertebrates, 
and in birds more than in mammals. The progress of improvement, then, in the two 
cases, cannot have been always by equal and corresponding steps; for the development 
