NATUKAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 313 



possibly accidentally begun could have come to end 

 only in such extraordinary and equivocal peal of bells, as 

 it Were, at the last. Of course to me, too, the porcupine 

 is not an express supernatural stroke of technical manu- 

 facture, but a product of Nature, just like everything 

 else that is within her bounds ; and if you ask me par- 

 ticularly how, I have to confess that I have no special 

 receipt in that direction, though I may possess such 

 general philosophy of nature as leaves me on the whole 

 at rest on the question assured of this, too, that, if ever 

 you are to account for the how by the methods of the 

 understanding, you will certainly never account for it by 

 what is called natural selection. Nay, may not this one 

 example in the case of the porcupine be allowed to be 

 exactly typical and crucially determinative of the single 

 position that is involved in the entire Darwinian 

 hypothesis ? There is the peculiar advantage, and there 

 are the peculiar materials, the spines, out of which alone, 

 plainly, it (the advantage, the rattle) is no more than a 

 modification, if ever modification was now, how did it 

 nil happen ? how did the modification come ? We have 

 considered how it might be, if the rattle were conceived 

 to attract. Mr. Darwin plainly intimates, for his part, 

 as we have seen, that the rattle, giving notice of the 

 spines, would, on the contrary, repel warn any enemy 

 off. But if it would be absurd for a vegetable-feeder to 

 rattle for an enemy in the dark, repulsion, the explana- 

 tion of Mr. Darwin, hardly lessens the difficulties 

 involved. In view of the struggle for existence, it at 

 once strikes us, for example : This impregnable animal, 

 how is it then so rare ? See how infinitely abundant 

 the dandelion is through its feathered seeds; but the 

 porcupine to Mr. Darwin is even more favoured as an 

 animal than is the dandelion as a plant ! Moral : the 

 whole earth ought to be overrun with porcupines. 



