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PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



and one art on another, are some cases in point illustrating 

 the need of allowing for concomitant uniformities. (See also 

 139.) Diverse anomalies in astronomical data have thus been 

 removed by the assumption and subsequent discovery of cor- 

 related facts. The following passage from Darwin (Origin of 

 Species, ch. 3) well exemplifies the need of heeding accompanying 

 uniformities: 



"I have found that the visits of bees are necessary for the fertilisation 

 of some kinds of clover; . . . [but] humble-bees alone visit the red clover, 

 as other bees cannot reach the nectar. . . . Hence we may infer as highly 

 probable that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very 

 rare in England, the heart's-ease and red clover would become very rare 

 or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends 

 in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs 

 and nests, and Col. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of 

 humble-bees, believes that 'more than two-thirds of them are thus 

 destroyed all over England'. Now the number of mice is largely dependent, 

 as everyone knows, on the number of cats; and Col. Newman says: 'Near 

 villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more 

 numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that 

 destroy the mice.' Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline 

 animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the inter- 

 vention first of mice, and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers 

 in that district." 



The more fundamental accompanying uniformities should, 

 however, receive our first attention. An ordinary plant, for 

 instance, depends on the relative compactness, and on the in- 

 gredients, of the soil; on sunshine; on the surrounding warmth, 

 especially at certain seasons; on the oxygen and the carbonic 

 acid of the atmosphere; on the visits of fertilising insects and, 

 perhaps, on other plants and animals; on nitrifying bacteria; etc. 

 Animals also cannot live without free oxygen in their environ- 

 ment, a certain degree of surrounding warmth, and light, food, 

 freedom of movement, and other external factors. And what 

 is true of classes of living beings of a higher or a lower 

 category, is true in regard to individuals and their component 

 parts. 



Moreover, the most fundamental accompanying uniformities 

 require to be pondered over from time to time. It is manifest 

 that if we imagine the degree of heat to be sufficiently raised 

 generally, all solids and liquids will turn into gases, and the 

 chemical elements will be decomposed into some simpler form 

 of matter, whilst if we conceive the degree of heat to be 

 sufficiently lowered generally, all gases and liquids will turn 

 into solids, and life and chemical changes would cease. In 

 this connection it is well to take, periodically, a long view, 

 casting our glances forwards and backwards into the eternities 

 in connection with any given subject. Similarly a grave 

 disturbance in the amicable relations between our globe and 

 the sun, or a lapse from "neutrality" on the part of one of 

 the nearest stars, would be of momentous consequence to 



