24 DARWINISM. 



hitherto been a much greater puzzle to those who knew 

 of its existence, Nature's imperfection. The whole crea- 

 tion is in constant travail to bring forth something 

 better than its present best. The products of man's 

 reason are not, you will readily admit, always perfect, 

 and yet man's reason is a part of the creation, and of 

 nature's work. The waste of life is prodigious, if such 

 a term is applicable to the circumstance that often 

 millions of spores are produced in order that half a 

 dozen plants may grow; millions of eggs in the roe 

 of a fish, in order that the parents may be represented 

 by three or four individuals. The bee defends itself 

 by its sting, but its weapon of defence is fatal to itself. 

 Were a merchant habitually to send five or six million 

 articles of merchandize across the Atlantic on the bare 

 possibility that five or six articles out of the number 

 might reach their destination; or, were a father to 

 arm his son with a weapon on the presumption that 

 the first time he used it, it would cost him his life ; 

 you would think the man mad, not wise. Yet, if the 

 astonishing fecundity of the braken, the mushroom, and 

 the codfish, if the sting of the bee with its backward 

 serratures, be the products of direct creation, the analogy 

 is somewhat telling. How different, on the other hand, 

 must our judgment be of those contrivances, when we 

 trace them to the simple, primary, beneficent law of 

 natural selection, working always steadily for the good 

 of each species, and so working, that we may feel 

 tolerably sure that when any species dies out and dis- 

 appears, it has been replaced by something better. For 



