CHAPTER VIII 



A DIG AT THE EVOLUTIONISTS 



TO rear a caterpillar-eater on a skewer- 

 ful of Spiders is a very innocent thing, 

 unlikely to compromise the security of the 

 State; it is also a very childish thing, as I 

 hasten to confess, and worthy of the school- 

 boy who, in the mysteries of his desk, seeks 

 as best he may some diversion from the fas- 

 cinations of his exercise in composition. 

 And I should not have undertaken these in- 

 vestigations, still less should I have spoken 

 them, not without some satisfaction, if I had 

 not discerned, in the results obtained in my 

 refectory, a certain philosophic import, in- 

 volving, so it seemed to me, the evolutionary 

 theory. 



It is assuredly a majestic enterprise, com- 

 mensurate with man's immense ambitions, to 

 seek to pour the universe into the mould of a 

 formula and submit every reality to the stand- 

 ard of reason. The geometrician proceeds 

 in this manner: he defines the cone, an ideal 

 conception; then he intersects it by a plane. 

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