CRUX OF THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS. 35 



more completely in the peace of mind which passeth 

 all understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy 

 mental organism by which over effort is felt instinc- 

 tively to be as vicious and contemptible as indolence. 

 He knew this too well to know the grounds of his 

 knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less com- 

 pletely, can see that such felicitous instinctive tempering 

 together of the two great contradictory principles, love 

 of effort and love of ease, has underlain every step 

 of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. 

 Nothing is worth looking at which is seen either too 

 obviously or with too much difficulty. Nothing is 

 worth doing or well done which is not done fairly 

 easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more 

 pardonable than any very perceptible excess; for virtue 

 has ever erred rather on the side of self-indulgence than 

 of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced through 

 the pleasures rather than through austerity. 



According to Buffon, then as also according to 

 Dr. Darwin, who was just such another practical and 

 genial thinker, and who was distinctly a pupil of 

 Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one 

 if an organ after a reasonable amount of inspection 

 appeared to be useless, it was to be called useless 

 without more ado, and theories were to be ordered out 

 of court if they were troublesome. In like manner, if 

 animals bred freely inter se before our eyes, as for 

 example the horse and ass, the fact was to be noted, 

 but no animals were to be classed as capable of inter- 

 breeding until they had asserted their right to such 

 classification by breeding with tolerable certainty. If, 



D 2 



