182 UTILITARIAN DOCTRINE, HOW FAR TRUE: 



evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole 

 advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing 

 conditions of life, if any part conies to be injurious, it will 

 be modified; or if it be not so, the being will become 

 extinct as myriads have become extinct. 



Natural selection tends only to make each organic being 

 as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other in- 

 habitants of the same country with which it comes into 

 competition. And we see that this is the standard of per- 

 fection attained under nature. The endemic productions of 

 New Zealand, for instance, are perfect, one compared with 

 another ; but they are now rapidly yielding before the ad- 

 vancing legions of plants and animals introduced from 

 Europe. Natural selection will not produce absolute per- 

 fection, nor do we always meet, as far as we can judge, 

 with this high standard under nature. The correction for 

 the aberration of light is said by Miiller not to be perfect 

 even in that most perfect organ, the human eye. Helm- 

 holtz, whose judgment no one will dispute, after describ- 

 ing in the strongest terms the wonderful powers of the 

 human eye, adds these remarkable words : " That which 

 we have discovered in the way of inexactness and imper- 

 fection in the optical machine and in the image on the 

 retina, is as nothing in comparison with the incongruities 

 which we have just come across in the domain of the sen- 

 sations. One might say that nature has taken delight in 

 accumulating contradictions in order to remove all founda- 

 tion from the theory of a pre-existing harmony between 

 the external and internal worlds." If our reason leads us 

 to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable con- 

 trivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we 

 may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances 

 are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the bee as 

 perfect, which, when used against many kinds of enemies, 

 cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, 

 and thus inevitably causes the death of the insect by tear- 

 ing out its viscera ? 



If we look at the sting of the bee, as having existed in a 

 remote progenitor, as a boring and serrated instrument, 

 like that in so many members of the same great order, and 

 that it has since been modified but not perfected for 

 its present purpose, with the poison originally adapted for 

 some other object, such as to produce galls, since inten- 

 sified, we can perhaps understand how it is that the use of 



