704 The Outline of Science 



It is surely a magnificent spectacle that Animate Nature 

 presents. What a gamut of life from the microscopic Infusorian 

 to the giant whale, from the hyssop on the wall to the cedar of 

 Lebanon! What abundance of life is revealed when the dredge 

 comes up, or when the insects rise before us in a cloud as we 

 walk through the grass land in a hot country! What variety of 

 architecture, what abundance of individuality, within the same 

 style! All is suggestive of fertile imagination. How strong 

 the pressure, as the waves of life surge up against their shores 

 we call this the "struggle for existence"; how numberless the 

 hand-and-glove fitnesses or adaptations; how subtle the linkages 

 in the web of life ; how constant the changef ulness or variability ; 

 how universal the beauty! But let us think over the deeper 

 impressions which fill the mind after the crowd of details sinks 

 to rest. These deeper impressions form part of the materials 

 which Biology gives over to Philosophy to build with. 



A MULTITUDE OF INDIVIDUALITIES, YET A SYSTEMA NATURAE 



Innumerable Species 



When we look at Nature with a fresh eye, in a new country, 

 or in some novel experience such as dredging, we have a transient 

 impression of overwhelming confusion, as if Aladdin's cave had 

 been suddenly burst open before us. Many miss this in ordinary 

 circumstances because familiarity breeds the contempt of inatten- 

 tion, and also because a very large number of living creatures 

 live a hidden life. For every conspicuous plant there are a score 

 inconspicuous, and for every readily visible animal there must 

 be a hundred unseen. It is not of individuals that we are think- 

 ing, but of individualities, of species. On a very moderate esti- 

 mate of species, there are at least 25,000 named backboned 

 animals, ten times as many named backboneless animals, and 

 about as many plants. There are 100,000 Dicotyledonous Flow- 

 ering Plants. Darwin speaks of finding twenty different kinds of 



