17 



the past, we can see"(?) what this animal "must have been;" or 

 what I must after all own it to have been, the mere creation of 

 my own brain. 



I believe this is a highly satisfactory and conclusive result of 

 the "eleven years" labour I have expended on my last publication. 



I believe that all the wisest men in the world for the six 

 thousand years since it is commonly supposed to have been 

 created, or six hundred thousand million years, or any number 

 more, as I believe, have been altogether wrong, and that it has 

 been reserved for me in this so-called nineteenth century to set 

 them all right and lay down the law for ever. 



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 could have 

 told him, that these bees abound near woods, or in any other un- 

 cultivated 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 in them, 

 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 sup- 

 position that the debasement of the intellect at any given time, 

 even assuming it as thus to be slowly recovered from, may have 

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



B 



