PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 187 



the totality of things, if ever reflected upon, is a com- 

 pound of fog and chaos : advance is painfully slow, 

 and interlarded with unpleasant falls into pits and 

 holes of illogicality and inconsequence ; to those 

 who have taken the trouble to push on, however, 

 an orderly system at last reveals itself. The problem 

 of the origin and relationship of species gave such 

 mental distress to those zoologists of the first half 

 of the nineteenth century who were conscientious 

 enough to struggle with it, that many of them ended 

 by a mental suppression of the problem and a refusal 

 to discuss it further. 



The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species was 

 to them what psycho-analysis is (or may be) to a 

 patient with a repressed complex. Or again, no one 

 can read accounts of the physicists' recent work on 

 the structure of the atom without experiencing an 

 extraordinary feeling of satisfaction. Instead of wallow- 

 ing in unrelated fects, we fly on wings of principle ; 

 not only can we better cut our way through the 

 jungle of things, but we are allowed a privilege that 

 has universally been considered one of the attributes 

 of Gods — the calm and untroubled understanding of 

 things and processes. 



* The Gods are happy. 

 They turn on all sides 

 Their shining eyes, 

 And see below them 

 The earth and men.' 



