XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 4.49 
farious, and, not unfrequently, ignorant attacks 
which have been made upon the “Origin of 
Species,’ there is nothing which has been more 
speciously criticised than this particular limitation. 
If people have nothing else to urge against the 
book, they say—* Well, after all, you see Mr, 
Darwin’s explanation of the ‘ Origin of Species’ 
is not good for much, because, in the long run, he 
admits that he does not know how organic matter 
began to exist. But if you admit any special 
creation for the first particle of organic matter 
you may just as well admit it for all the rest; five 
hundred or five thousand distinct creations are 
just as intelligible, and just as little difficult to 
understand, as one.’ The answer to these cavils 
is two-fold. In the first place, all human inquiry 
must stop somewhere ; all our knowledge and all 
our investigation cannot take us beyond the limits 
set by the finite and restricted character of our 
faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which 
accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession 
of phenomena. So far as I can venture to-offer 
an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our 
being in existence, the highest object that human 
beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit 
of any such chimera as the annihilation of the 
unknown ; but it is simply the unwearied endeay- 
our to remove its boundaries a little further from 
our little sphere of action. 
I wonder if any historian would for a moment 
VOL, II GG 
