28 De Vi Physica 



dition its owner could not have survived 

 for three days ? 



Advance, now, another step ; consider, 

 not any single organ, but one of the innu- 

 merable cases of organisation, where several 

 organs combine to effect a common end : 

 as, e.g., the very commonest of all common 

 animals, the garden spider. A man coming 

 forward with a theory claiming to account 

 for the origin of all organisations, a theory 

 based on the meditation of a lifetime, which 

 breaks to pieces on the spider, can scarcely 

 be acquitted of philosophical insolvency. 

 And yet, what is a spider ? A combination 

 of organs, each without the other worse than 

 useless : a combination that cannot continue 

 to exist, deprived of any one component 

 part : for one part produces the raw ma- 

 terial, which another spins into threads, 

 which again are manipulated by others (in 

 a way impossible to any other animal ; for 



