DARWIN VS. GALIANI. 417 



cations of structure, is a sealed book to us, and will for ever remain so. 

 The molecular mechanics of crystallization, of chemical processes, seems, 

 it is true, to be more easily understood than that of cells; still, for the 

 present it is as hidden from us as is the latter, though its unintelligi- 

 bility is of a different kind. It is the adaptation seen in the develop- 

 ment and in the functions of the cell which, even were we acquainted 

 with the descent of all forms, would still leave organic nature a mystery. 

 By laws of structure alone we can not explain adaptation in organic be- 

 ings. Hence, however complete our doctrine of descent, the ancient 

 riddle which has confronted mankind from the beginning persists with 

 all its original obscurity, unless something else comes to succor us. 

 The sphinx of teleology still threatens unconquered from her crag. 

 What boots it to know the reason why all vertebrates are made up of 

 the self-same homologous parts, if we do not further know what natural 

 cause so transformed these parts as to make them exactly answer to the 

 purposes of each separate species ? If, to explain this latter fact, a 

 supernaturalistic intervention is still necessary, then we are yet in 

 about the same old rut. Formerly the question used to be why, in 

 repeated creative acts, Omnipotence always clung to the same models, 

 and at times did only indifferent work ? But now we must ask why it 

 should, in advance, have tied its own hands, committing itself to faulty 

 constructions and making it impossible for itself, e. g., to create a verte- 

 brate with six extremities, though in a given case such a plan might 

 be a very serviceable one. Hence we are, on the whole, no better off, 

 and have only altered the form of the problem, without coming nearer 

 to a solution. 



In these straits we find in the doctrine of natural selection a mea- 

 surably acceptable solution. Associated with the laws of structure, it 

 would forthwith enable us to understand why organized beings are so 

 wonderfully adapted to one another and to the world around them ; why 

 in themselves they are adapted to these ends, at the same time, however, 

 exhibiting many an inadaptation ; why they always stand in groups 

 made up of the self-same parts, as though Nature had not been able to 

 invent something new, while nevertheless each one of these parts is 

 cleverly so transformed as to answer a special purpose in each species. 

 Sexual selection, then, comes in to perfect the weapons, offensive and 

 defensive, of the wooing male animal, and furnishes the answer to the 

 question how animated nature happens to lavish plumage adornment 

 on birds; whereas Maupertuis's theorem of the smallest action pre- 

 cludes any superfluity in inanimate nature. Even the glowing hue of 

 Alpine flowers is accounted for by the attraction which brighter-col- 

 ored individuals exercise upon the insects scarce in those heights, and 

 necessary for fertilization. And mimicry, a fact brought to light by Mr, 

 Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom we owe an important share in the dis- 

 covery of the grand principle of natural selection, still further multi- 

 plies the conditions under which new forms come into existence and 



