THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 477 



the humble-bee with its rude cells, through the Melipona 

 with its more artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its astonish- 

 ing architecture. The bees place themselves at equal 

 distances apart upon the wax, sweep and excavate equal 

 spheres round the selected points. The spheres intersect, 

 and the planes of intersection are built up with thin 

 laminae. Hexagonal cells are thus formed. This mode 

 of treating such questions is, as I have said, representa- 

 tive. The expositor habitually retires from the more 

 perfect and complex, to the less perfect and simple, and 

 carries you with him through stages of perfecting adds 

 increment to increment of infinitesimal change, and in this 

 way gradually breaks down your reluctance to admit that 

 the exquisite climax of the whole could be a result of 

 natural selection, 



Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty; and, saturated as the sub- 

 ject was with his own thought, he must have known, 

 better than his critics, the weakness as well as the strength 

 of his theory. This of course would be of little avail were 

 his object a temporary dialectic victory, instead of the 

 establishment of a truth which he means to be everlasting. 

 But he takes no pains to disguise the weakness he has dis- 

 cerned; nay, he takes every pains to bring it into the 

 strongest light. His vast resources enable him to cope with 

 objections started by himself and others, so as to leave the 

 final impression upon the reader's mind that, if they be not 

 completely answered, they certainly are not fatal. Their 

 negative force being thus destroyed, you are free to be 

 influenced by the vast positive mass of evidence he is able 

 to bring before you. This largeness of knowledge, and 

 readiness of resource, render Mr. Darwin the most terrible 

 of antagonists. Accomplished naturalists have leveled 

 heavy and sustained criticisms against him not always 

 with the view of fairly weighing his theory, but with the 

 express intention of exposing its weak points only. This 

 does not irritate him. He treats every objection with a 

 soberness and thoroughness which even Bishop Butler 

 might be proud to imitate, surrounding each fact with its 

 appropriate detail, placing it in its proper relations, and 

 usually giving it a significance which, as long as it was 

 kept isolated, failed to appear. This is done without a 

 trace of ill-temper. He moves over the subject with the 

 passionless strength of a glacier; and the grinding of the 



