OF BUTTERFLIES 261 



shall have to concede to the same laws of develop- 

 ment which have moulded the structure and form 

 of all organized beings, the power to develop that 

 wonderful display of color and pattern on the wings 

 of butterflies which appeals so powerfully to the 

 aesthetic sense of every human being. 



Yet plainly natural selection, as such, cannot 

 account for everything in color, any more than it 

 can in structure. Infinite variety and multiplicity 

 of pattern may be due to its action ; but what shall 

 we say of infinite harmony ? of a harmony which 

 appeals to savage and to sage ? There has yet to be 

 brought forward one single line of evidence to show 

 that natural selection or any other purely natural, 

 law-constrained force can, uncontrolled, produce or 

 even sustain that harmony of tint and design which 

 each of the whole tribe of butterflies displays on its 

 individual surface ; a harmony so infinitely ex- 

 tended when comparisons are begun that the eter- 

 nities would not suffice to exhaust them ; a har- 

 mony pervading the utmost minutiae, which the 

 unaided eye cannot perceive ; a harmony appealing 

 at every point to the aesthetic sense of the highest 

 creature we know, doubtless also to many a lower 

 one whose physical and psychological acquirements 

 permit it. The untrained child but rarely and ac- 



