THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 99 



not touch ; he does not deal with it at all; but he says 

 given the origin of organic matter supposing its creation 

 to have already taken place, my object is to show in 

 consequence of what laws and what demonstrable properties 

 of organic matter, and of its environments, such states of 

 organic nature as those with which we are acquainted 

 must have come about. This, you will observe, is a 

 perfectly legitimate proposition ; every person has a 

 right to define the limits of the inquiry which he sets 

 before himself ; and yet it is a most singular thing that 

 in all the multifarious, and, not unfrequently, ignorant 

 attacks which have been made upon the Origin of Species, 

 there is nothing which has been more speciously criticised 

 than this particular limitation. If people have nothing 

 else to urge against the book, they say " Well, after all, 

 you see, Mr. Darwin's explanation of the ' Origin of Species ' 

 is not good for much, because, in the long run, he admits 

 that he does not know how organic matter began to exist. 

 But if you admit any special creation for the first particle 

 of organic matter you may just as well admit it for all 

 the rest ; five hundred or five thousand distinct creations 

 are just as intelligible, and just as little difficult to under- 

 stand, as one." The answer to these cavils is two-fold. 

 In the first place, all human inquiry must stop somewhere ; 

 all our knowledge and all our investigation cannot take us 

 beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character 

 of our faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which 

 accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession of 

 phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on 

 such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the 

 highest object that human beings can set before them- 

 selves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the anni- 

 hilation of the unknown ; but it is simply the unwearied 

 endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from 

 our little sphere of action. 



I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit 

 the objection, that it is preposterous to trouble ourselves 

 about the history of the Roman Empire, because we 

 do not know anything positive about the origin and first 

 building of the city of Rome I Would it be a fair objection 

 to urge, respecting the sublime discoveries of a Newton, 

 or a Kepler, those great philosophers, whose discoveries 

 have been of the profoundest benefit and service to all men, 

 to say to them" After all that you have told us as to 



