142 THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 



of one particular insect, and suffers destruction 

 from tlie untimely attentions and depredations of 

 another. If you catch all the caterpillars of a 

 special sort which prey npon the tender shoots of 

 your gooseberries, you are indeed insuring the 

 safety of the leaves and fruit of those useful 

 bushes ; but you are at the same time externii- 

 nating the future moths by whose kindly aid your 

 cabbages and cauliflowers can alone be induced to 

 set their seeds for coming seasons. It is impossi- 

 ble for us ever to produce only the exact single 

 result that we ourselves personally desire ; what- 

 ever positive steps we take entail innumerable and 

 far-reaching consequences which far outrun our 

 feeble little human powers of calculation. Noth- 

 ing in the world stands absolutely alone and 

 isolated in its own domain ; every fact and every 

 object are but parts in one great continuous 

 whole, infinitely varied, but infinitely interwoven 

 and infinitely interdependent. Each creature has 

 endless relations, not with one other creature 

 alone among the many around it, but with the 

 whole chain and group of creatures by which it is 

 environed ujion every side. It is the common 

 error of the human species to underestimate the 

 vast and wonderful complexity of nature, to sup- 

 pose that it can deal with facts as isolated, and 

 overlook the whole enormous series of remote 

 consequences that follow of necessity upon every 



