24 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



But for the most part, she finished her species myriads 

 of years ago, and has made little alteration since in the 

 type. And having elaborated all her forms, she did her 

 best to efface all traces of her methods of work, and of 

 the slow and laborious steps by which she reached her 

 ends, which, now that we have discovered them, seem at 

 a first view as startling, when morally regarded, as they 

 are simple from the point of view of mechanical con- 

 trivance : consisting simply in invariably favouring the 

 strong and the successful, and in leaving the weak to 

 perish in the eternal and necessary " struggle for exist- 

 ence." Nature had only shown to us the finished article 

 of her manufacture, and we all in our ignorance admired 

 greatly; she had carefully reserved the secret of her 

 processes, which would have much diminished our 

 admiration. It is to Darwin that we owe the drawing 

 aside of the mysterious curtain behind which Nature 

 had carried on her secret operations in the elaboration 

 of her species and varieties. He has explained it to us, 

 and the marvel ceases. He it is who has taken us into 

 her inmost laboratory, and shown her at her labour and 

 in her working dress. He it is first and chiefly who 

 has surprised Nature in the act, who has discovered her 

 secret, and disclosed the processes by which, after long- 

 continued practice, she has reached in some cases so great 

 and splendid results. 



But if Darwin has diminished our wonder, by show- 

 ing us the secret of Nature's mechanical skill, he has 

 aroused other, and some of them disquieting, sentiments. 

 For what a process, according to his showing, Evolution 

 has been ! One long-continued battle without quarter, 

 raging fiercely over the whole animal kingdom, and 

 carried on even into the vegetable kingdom, though there 

 e ss cruelly, because there is no attendant consciousness ; 



