i SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 29 



are not those heavens which are beyond the immediate 

 objects of our observation coloured by our prejudices, pre- 

 possessions, emotions, or imagination, as often as they are 

 defined by any profound insight into the depth of nature's 

 laws ? In most of these questions an open mind and a sus- 

 pended judgment appear to me the true scientific position, 

 whichever way our inclinations may lead us. 



For myself, I must own that when I endeavour to look 

 beyond the glass, and frame some idea of the plan upon 

 which all the diversity in the organic world has been brought 

 about, I see the strongest grounds for the belief, difficult as it 

 sometimes is in the face of the strange, incomprehensible, 

 apparent defects in structure, and the far stranger, weird 

 ruthless savagery of habit, often brought to light by the 

 study of the ways of living creatures, that natural selection, 

 or survival of the fittest, has, among other agencies, played a 

 most important part in the production of the present condition 

 of the organic world, and that it is a universally acting and 

 beneficent force continually tending towards the perfection of 

 the individual, of the race, and of the whole living world. 



I can even go farther and allow my dream still thus to 

 run : 



Oli yet we trust that somehow good 

 Will be the final goal of ill ... 



That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 



That not one life shall be destroyed, 



Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

 When God hath made the pile complete. 



