CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS. 337 



it be referred to reason no, only to instinct in men. 

 But that would be to err by excess, for instinct is. 



If nature is not incoherent like a wretched tragedy, 

 she is still only daemonic, as we can read in Aristotle. 

 That is, she acts without reflection as though with 

 reflection, without motive as though with motive, without 

 sight as though with sight. Eeason is in nature 

 immanent; it is not explicit; it is an sick, not 

 fur sick. 



In what way soever, nevertheless, still it is there. 

 Even Hume (D. of N. R., Pt. vi.) exclaims, " How could 

 things have been as they are, were there not an original, 

 inherent principle of order somewhere, in thought or in 

 matter ? " Only a very dark principle, only a very 

 dark thought, it could have been in these insects. The 

 bee and the butterfly are wholly given up to honey ; 

 only in honey it is that they have their being, so to 

 speak : how could they possibly think that their own all 

 in all, honey, would never do for their children, and that 

 for them they must provide something so unlike honey 

 as vegetable powder and vegetable leaves ? 



It would be pleasant if only for the sake of Charles, 

 we could get in the thin edge of an inherited habit here. 

 But how were that possible ? Even if latterly (by an 

 " observation and experience " which are inconceivable) 

 there were an inheritance of habit, how, in the first 

 instance, just abstractly at once appearing, by extra- 

 ordinary accident, or in what manner soever, did this 

 thought in the original butterfly act : what I eat is honey, 

 but what, when born, that which is within me can only 

 eat is a green leaf ? ! 



We have certainly seen now ample testimony to such 

 singularity of structure as may at least tend to shake 

 belief in the power of natural selection to explain it. It 

 may be said, indeed, that if any philosophy is to be 



