10 BEITISH APHIDES. 



with difficulties, and we can hardly be said to have in 

 possession materials to do more than theorise. Some 

 inscrutable force is connected with the secret of life, 

 with its metamorphic powers, and its attributes of 

 irritability, assimilation, reproduction, and final death. 



Mr. A. Wallace would seem desirous to cut the knot of 

 this difficulty, by stating " that variation is an ultimate 

 fact of nature, which wants no further explanation 

 than that we cannot even conceive it to be otherwise." 



As motion in nature is the universal law, and even 

 " the stars fixed for ever " have their tendency some- 

 where, so doubtless life and spirit are no exceptions to 

 this rule, but have ever an upward progress, or a 

 miserable degeneracy. 



But dogmatism ill becomes the student. Montaigne 

 quotes : 



" Nee me pudet ut istos, fateri nescire, quod nesciam ;" 



and, again, a great mind has said : 



" Doubt nestles at the root of TrutH." 



" Nasce per quello a guisa de rampoUo 

 Apple del vero 11 dubblo. . ."* 



" Honest doubt is the deepest spring of honest faith. "f 



Nevertheless, we may yet founder upon a one-sided 

 agnosticism — the pride which apes humility. 



* Dante, ' Del Paradiso,' Cant, iv, 1. 130. 



t Prof. Max Miiller, ' Lectures in the Chapterhouse of Westminster.' 



