THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



33 



of wax is a direct profit to the insect's | 

 life. The time that would otherwise be j 

 devoted to the making of wax is devoted 

 to the gathering and storing of honey for j 

 winter food. Mr. Darwin passes from 

 the humble-bee, with its rude cells, 

 through the Melipona, with its more 

 artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its 

 astonishing architecture. The bees place 

 themselves at equal distances apart upon 

 the wax, sweep and excavate equal 

 spheres round the selected points. The 

 spheres intersect, and the planes of inter- 

 section are built up with thin lamina. 

 Hexagonal cells are thus formed. This 

 mode of treating such questions is, as I 

 have said, representative. The expositor 

 habitually retires from the more perfect 

 and complex, to the less perfect and 

 simple, and carries you with him through 

 stages of perfecting adds increment to 

 increment of infinitesimal change, and in 

 this way gradually breaks down your 

 reluctance to admit that the exquisite 

 climax of the whole could be a result of 

 natural selection. 



Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty ; and, j 

 saturated as the subject was with his 

 own thought, he must have known, 

 better than his critics, the weakness as j 

 well as the strength of his theory. This i 

 of course would be of little avail were 

 his object a .temporary dialectic victory, | 

 instead of the establishment of a truth j 

 which he means to be everlasting. But | 

 he takes no pains to disguise the weak- 

 ness he has discerned ; nay, he takes 

 every pains to bring it into the strongest 

 light. His vast resources enable him to 

 cope with objections started by himself 

 and others, so as to leave the final 

 impression upon the reader's mind that, 

 if they be not completely answered, they 

 certainly are not fatal. Their negative 

 force being thus destroyed, you are free 

 to be influenced by the vast positive 

 mass of evidence he is able to bring 

 before you. This largeness of know- 

 ledge and readiness of resource render 

 Mr. Darwin the most terrible of antago- 

 nists. Accomplished naturalists have 

 levelled heavy and sustained criticisms 



against him not always with the view 

 of fairly weighing his theory, but with 

 the express intention of exposing its 

 weak points only. This does not irritate 

 him. He treats every objection with a 

 soberness and thoroughness which even 

 Bishop Butler might be proud to imitate, 

 surrounding each fact with its appropriate 

 detail, placing it in its proper relations, 

 and usually giving it a significance which, 

 as long as it was kept isolated, failed to 

 appear. This is done without a trace of 

 ill-temper. He moves over the subject 

 with the passionless strength of a glacier; 

 and the grinding of the rocks is not 

 always without a counterpart in the 

 logical pulverisation of the objector. 

 But though in handling this mighty 

 theme all passion has been stilled, there 

 is an emotion of the intellect, incident 

 to the discernment of new truth, which 

 often colours and warms the pages of 

 Mr. Darwin. His success has been 

 great ; and this implies not only the 

 solidity of his work, but the preparedness 

 of the public mind for such a revelation. 

 On this head a remark of Agassiz 

 impressed me more than anything else. 

 Sprung from a race of theologians, this 

 celebrated man combated to the last the 

 theory of natural selection. One of the 

 many times I had the pleasure of meeting 

 him in the United States was at Mr. 

 Winthrop's beautiful residence at Brook- 

 line, near Boston. Rising from luncheon, 

 we all halted as if by common consent 

 in front of a window, and continued 

 there a discussion which had been started 

 at table. The maple was in its autumn 

 glory, and the exquisite beauty of the 

 scene outside seemed, in my case, to 

 interpenetrate without disturbance the 

 intellectual action. Earnestly, almost 

 sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the 

 gentlemen standing round : " I confess 

 that I was not prepared to see this 

 theory received as it has been by the 

 best intellects of our time. Its success 

 is greater than I could have thought 

 possible." 



