1869.] The MalMj Archipelago. 173 



cooking utensils, preserve jars, dagger-sheaths, pipes, cords, &c. ; 

 and yet he says : * " It is probable that my limited means of ob- 

 servation did not make me acquainted with one half the ways in 

 which it is serviceable to the Dyaks of Sarawak." 



But upon what principle is this wonderful adaptation of means 

 to ends explicable ? The author gives us no clue to the mystery, 

 his philosophy being merely negative. Does pure Darwinism 

 account for it ? Is it the survival of the fittest by means of natural 

 selection ? That is to say, has nature selected the fittest plant for 

 Man's use, and allowed it to survive ? No, that is not Mr. Darwin's 

 theory. According to his view, which is no doubt correct as far 

 as it goes, those forms of Hfe survive which are the best able to 

 resist adverse conditions of existence ; and therefore, although the 

 presence of the Bamboo in Borneo may help us to understand why 

 Man has survived there, superseding perhaps some Simian form of 

 life, yet it throws no light upon the adaptability of the vegetable 

 to the wants of an animal (Man) not yet formed, whilst it was 

 struggling with the surrounding conditions of existence. 



Shall we gain a clue to the mystery by calling in the aid of the 

 Huxleyan doctrine of " Matter and Law ? " Wiser brains than ours 

 may be able to apply that misty-physical philosophy, as recently 

 enunciated by its author in a contemporary ; f but we are constrained 

 to admit that we do not yet clearly comprehend it, and are therefore 

 unable to apply it in the case under consideration. " Matter," no 

 doubt, there is — that is quite clear ; and " Law," no one can ignore ; 

 but our difiiculty is to ascertain whether in the case under con- 

 sideration it is matter that legislates, or the law that is material ; 

 and we confess we have given it up in despair, for, after all, the 

 whole phenomenon may be but " the unknown and hypothetical cause 

 of states of our own consciousness ; " and then of course it would be 

 best to follow Professor Huxley's " wise ad\dce," and " not trouble 

 ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, 

 we know nothing, and can know nothing." 



Well, then, as Darwinism fails to explain the phenomenon, and 

 Huxleyism declines to come to our aid, we must, at the risk of being 

 ranked amongst the superstitious, appeal to a very old-fashioned 

 doctrine to account for the wonderful adaptability of every part of 

 this beautiful tropical plant to the necessities and luxuries of what 

 would otherwise be helpless human beings ; and perhaps we may be 

 permitted to cling for a little while longer to the delusion that a 

 beneficent Deity, to whom there is no past nor future, does exist, 



* Wallace, p. 120. 



t The 'Fortnightly,' edited by John Morley, No. xxvi., Feb., 1861, in which 

 the curious will find the latest exposition of the Materialistic doctrine, by one of 

 its ablest professors. 



