Who painted the Flowers? 23 



the relative situations of the stamen and pistil, are all 

 arranged with reference to the visits of insects, and in 

 such a manner as to ensure the grand object which these 

 visits are destined to effect." 



The expression " unconscious selection " here em- 

 ployed suggests a question which Sir John Lubbock 

 does not explicitly propose, and which, though I do not 

 purpose to treat it, should at least be indicated. Of 

 course the selection, whatever it be, exercised by insects 

 must, so far as they are concerned, be " unconscious." 

 But when that is allowed the question of design remains 

 in its entirety. Are these unconscious workers, or are 

 they not, the instruments of conscious intelligence ? 

 Many, especially among the lesser lights, of the modern 

 school are very peremptory in their denial of any con- 

 sciousness, or intelligence, or aesthetic intention, any- 

 where in the process of evolution. Mr. Grant Allen, for 

 example, tells us 1 that "the whole loveliness of flowers 

 is ... dependent upon all kinds of accidental causes 

 causes, that is to say, into which the deliberate design 

 of the production of beautiful effects did not enter as a 

 distinct factor." The question so raised I do not now 

 wish to treat. It appears to me that to institute an 

 argument on this point would be very like insisting that 

 we could not get a finished picture of the Venetian 

 school by shaking a kaleidoscope ; nor produce a poem 

 of Tennyson's, say the In Memoriam, from the letters 

 which designate the divisions of our police, by arranging 

 the men who compose the force along Regent Street, 

 according to their height or their weight or their length 

 of service. It is true that an eminent leader of fashion- 

 able thought 2 finds the existence of a Providence a less 

 satisfactory and scientific explanation of the phenomena 

 we observe than an "unconscious effort to the good and 

 the true which exists in the universe, and throws a cast 

 of the dice through each of us." But such phrases are, 



1 Evohttionist at Large, p. 205. 

 * M. Renan, Souvenirs cCEnJance et dejeunesse. 



