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effect all this, beginning only to " slightly modify " an instinct, I can 

 do as much as the magicians of Egypt, or the wizards of the Arabian 

 Night's Entertainments. Of course, I can ; " wonders never cease " in 

 the creations of my brain. I grant you, if you put it to me, that in 

 like manner, by only " slightly modifying " the instincts of the sheep, 

 it would in due time, by a touch of my wand, heigh presto ! be turned 

 into a wolf. That is my mode of philosophical enquiry, though you 

 may think it a preposterous series of assumptions, all purely imaginary 

 and utterly incapable of proof, strung together in the attempt to cancel 

 Creation and so ignore a CKEATOK. 



I believe that "it seems at first quite inconceivable how bees have 

 practically solved a recondite problem," but I can soon get over such 

 a trifle as this, or the equally slight apparent difficulty how the spider 

 came to construct its web (on my theory), or how the tailor-bird learned 

 to sew together leaves to construct its nest, or to whom the beaver 

 served its apprenticeship in the art of cutting down timber and 

 building* a house, and so on through all the instincts of all the 

 creatures of Nature. I hold that " the difficulty is not nearly so great 

 as it at first appeared." Oh, dear 110 ! Shew me the difficulty that I 

 cannot ride over on my hobby. I will thank you, I say, to show me 

 any such. 



I believe, as I said, that bees have learned by degrees to " strike 

 imaginary spheres," being able " somehow to know the proper distance" to 

 work at. You may reply to this that if carpenters and masons were to 

 ' l strike imaginary spheres," and ' ; somehow " to ascertain the " proper 

 distances " without rule or plummet, they would be likely to make but 

 a bungling job of it. I pass that by ; all I say is that the bee 

 imagines a circle which it never really sweeps, knows when and where one 

 such circle meets another, and builds its building on these baseless dreams. 



I believe that natural selection has by degrees, in untold ages upon 

 ages, led the hive-bee to make its comb " absolutely perfect in the 

 economising of wax." It may be a difficulty to you, but it is none 

 to me, that swarm after swarm must have been hatched with new 

 instincts, a queen producing 20,000 eggs capable of " striking imaginary 

 spheres," suggestive to modern philosophers of striking out the most 

 wild freaks of the imagination to be set forth in due time in a mere 

 jingle of words making a pretence to science. Supposed facts, in my 

 opinion, are to be established by the " use of the imagination " 

 inventing phenomena which have no real existence, taking for granted 

 what had to be proved, and by the unlimited use of inaccurate language 

 enveloped in a cloud of words involved as much as possible. 



I believe all I have said about the bees, and I do not consider that 

 it is for me to explain with whom or with what they have to struggle, the 

 humble bee doing just as well with its rough architecture as the 

 Mexican bee with its mathematical construction, and wanting no 

 improvement, excepting in the brain of a " philosopher." 



I believe that we ought never to refer to final causes, though Dr. 

 Whewell says we cannot help doing so, as we prove by ourselves often using 

 such expressions as Nature's '' designs " and " her objects," protesting all 

 the while that we only use them in a "wide metaphorical sense." 



I believe that Sir Charles Lyell was quite wrong when he said 

 that " species have a real existence in Nature," and that each was 

 " endowed at ite creation " with its present attributes, because, he says, 

 "we must suppose that when the author of Nature creates an animal 

 or plant, all the possible circumstances in which its descendants are 

 destined to live are foreseen." 



I believe in the transmutation of species, though Sir Charles Lyell 

 holds that the argument from the brain in the young of animals lends 



