86 DISCRIMINATIONS CHAP. 



utility can be detected, but in which, 

 nevertheless, development has certainly 

 held its way, steadily and often with 

 marvellous results. Nor is it less 

 certain that there are some character- 

 istics of many organisms which can be 

 of no use whatever to themselves, but 

 are of immense use to other organisms 

 which find them nutritive and delicious 

 to devour or valuable to domesticate 

 and enslave. In short, men have been 

 more and more coming to perceive that, 

 as Agassiz once wrote to me in a 

 private letter, " the phenomena of 

 organic life have all the wealth and 

 intricacy of the highest mental mani- 

 festations, and none of the simplicity of 

 purely mechanical laws." 



What, then, is Mr. Spencer's own 

 verdict on the Darwinian theory of 

 Natural Selection? He confesses at 

 once that it gives no explanation of 



