REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 263 



point of view all theories of evolution, as at present applied 

 to life, are fundamentally defective in being too partial in 

 their character; and this applies more particularly to those 

 which are "monstic" or "agnostic," and thus endeavour to 

 dispense with a Creative Will behind nature. It may be 

 instructive to illustrate from the facts developed in preceding 

 chapters this feature of most of the attempts at generahsation 

 on this subject. 



First, then,* these hypotheses are too partial, in their ten- 

 dency to refer numerous and complex phenomena to one 

 cause, or to a few causes only, when all trustworthy analogy 

 would indicate that they must result from many concurrent 

 forces and determinations of force. We have of late been 

 ver)' familiar with those ingenious, not to say amusing, specula- 

 tions in which some entomologists and botanists have indulged 

 with reference to the mutual relations of flowers and haustellate 

 insects. Geologically the facts oblige us to begin with Cryp- 

 togamous plants and mandibulate insects ; and out of the 

 desire of insects for non-existent honey, and the adaptations of 

 plants to the requirements of non-existent suctorial apparatuSj 

 we have to evolve the marvellous complexity of floral form 

 and colouring, and the exquisitely delicate apparatus of the 

 mouths of haustellate insects. Now when it is borne in mind 

 that this theory implies a mental confusion on our part pre- 

 cisely similar to that which in the department of mechanics 

 actuates the seekers for perpetual motion, that we have not the 

 smallest tittle of evidence that the changes required have 

 actually occurred in any one case, and that the thousands of 

 other structures and relations of the plant and the insect have 

 to be worked out by „ series of concurrent evolutions so 

 complex and absolutely incalculable in the aggregate that the 

 cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy were child's 

 play in comparison, we need not wonder that the common 

 sense of mankind revolts against such fancies, and that we are 

 accused of attempting to construct the universe by methods 



