I believe that it may help my argument, if I can find people 

 simple enough to believe that humble bees are common in gardens, 

 and scarce elsewhere in comparison, in consequence of their being 

 preyed on by field-mice which are kept down by cats about houses ; 

 the fact being, as any national-school boy can see, that these bees 

 abound near woods, or in any other uncultivated places where thistles 

 and other- wild flowers which bees are fond of are found, a hundred-fold 

 more than they do in gardens, and that if they are found more or less 

 numerously in gardens, it is only because of there being more flowers 

 there, for which they will fly for long distances, it is said for miles, there 

 being no more nests there than anywhere else, and in ninety-nine cases 

 out of one hundred nothing like so many. 



I believe that all creation is derived from some one form, a mere 

 monad, although I admit that " no one can at present say by what 

 line of descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mammals, 

 birds, reptiles, were derived from either of the two lower vertebrate 

 classes, namely, amphibians and fishes." 



I believe that it requires several generations of cultivated talent 

 to make the mind equal to higher intellectual attainments, but I find 

 it convenient to forget that it is just as easy a supposition that the 

 debasement of the intellect at any given time, even assuming it as thus 

 to be slowly recovered from, may have been acquired gradually by 

 neglect from a previous height equal to that to be finally attained to. 



I believe that there is no such art as logic, at least, if there is, 

 that it is quite beneath me to be guided by it, and that one premiss, 

 or at all events a number of single premisses strung together so as to 

 give a great appearance of argument to those who know no better, is 

 amply sufficient to prove any conclusion. 



1 believe that the Christian is the happiest of men, because he evi- 

 dently has a hope for another world in addition to the peaceful happi- 

 ness he enjoys here. 



I believe that an infidel or an Unbeliever is "of all men most 

 miserable ;" nevertheless I have done all I could to make others as 

 wretched as I am myself, and have given, and can give them, nothing 

 in return but a dreary blank. If you ask me about the future, there, 

 I confess, I am in the dark ; all I can say is that you and I will 

 " melt into the infinite azure of the past," (Tyndall) (whatever that 

 may mean). I repeat that I believe that Christian Believers have a 

 peace of mind which I have not myself. They have " a good 

 hope" for the future, which I must admit I have not myself, 

 "having no hope, and without GOD in the world." I do my little 

 best, or worst, to shake their faith or rob them of their peace of mind, 

 but I have nothing better, because I have nothing at all to give them 

 in the place of it. I cannot offer them any happiness in this world or 

 in any future state, because I do not believe that there will be any future 

 state, so that if you ask me what is the cm Itono of all I have written, 

 I cannot tell you. If you ask me what is the cul malo? that is quite 

 another question, and much more easily answered. I offer you no 

 happiness here or hereafter, and all I can do is to rob those of you 

 who are fond and foolish enough to take up with the idle conceits of 

 my "vain philosophy," of their present hope, and therewith of their 

 expectation of future happiness, which but for me they might have. 



I, (Huxley) believe that there is a good deal to be said for the 

 hypothesis, that animals are mere machines, as much so as if they 

 were mills or steam engines, and that they Have no feeling ; that 

 they do not hear, see, or smell, and that their u apparent states of con- 

 sciousness," as they seem to us, are only the results of a " mechanical 

 reflex process." (" Risum tencatis amid / " This is philosophy ! This 



