CONCLUSION 51 



feel far more interest in examining it. How in- 

 teresting is every instinct, when we speculate on 

 their origin as an hereditary or congenital habit or 

 produced by the selection of individuals differing 

 slightly from their parents. We must look at every 

 complicated mechanism and instinct, as the sum- 

 mary of a long history, (as the summing up) of 1 useful 

 contrivances, much like a work of art. How in- 

 teresting does the distribution of all animals 

 become, as throwing light on ancient geography. 

 [We see some seas bridged over.] Geology loses in 

 its glory from the imperfection of its archives 2 , but 

 how does it gain in the immensity of the periods of 

 its formations and of the gaps separating these 

 formations. There is much grandeur in looking at 

 the existing animals either as the lineal descendants 

 of the forms buried under thousand feet of matter, 

 or as the coheirs of some still more ancient ancestor. 

 It accords with what we know of the law impressed 

 on matter by the Creator, that the creation and 

 extinction of forms, like the birth and death of 

 individuals should be the effect of secondary [laws] 

 means 3 . It is derogatory that the Creator of 

 countless systems of worlds should have created 

 each of the myriads of creeping parasites and 

 [slimy] worms which have swarmed each day of 

 life on land and water (on) [this] one globe. We 

 cease being astonished, however much we may 

 deplore, that a group of animals should have been 

 directly created to lay their eggs in bowels and 

 flesh of other, that some organisms should delight 

 in cruelty, that animals should be led away by 

 false instincts, that annually there should be an 



1 In the Origin, Ed. i. p. 486, vi. p. 665, the author speaks of the " sum- 

 ming up of many contrivances " : I have therefore introduced the above 

 words which make the passage clearer. In the Origin the comparison is 

 with "a great mechanical invention," not with a work of art. 



2 See a similar passage in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 487, vi. p. 667. 



3 See the Origin, Ed. i. p. 488, vi. p. 668. 



