250 LORD GRIMTHORPE 
book on the “ Origin of the Laws of Nature,” I noticed the 
very few phenomena of beauty in the world for which any 
evolutionary theory at all has been invented, and I will say a 
few words on them presently. If they were ten times as many 
as they are, and if the evolutionists’ explanation of them were 
ten times more certain than it is, the automatic theory would 
be no more proved than it is, so long as any considerable 
number of phenomena obstinately stand out inexplicable by 
it. In every branch of real science—though apparently not in 
this sham science that pretends to go behind all others—that 
rule of reasoning is undisputed, and is recognised universally. 
Here are two well-known specimens of its recognition. The 
motions of Uranus, for some years after its discovery by 
Herschel, were so abnormal as to make some astronomers doubt 
whether the law of gravity was really as universal at all 
distances as had been supposed ever since its establishment 
by Newton for all the solar system known to him. And if no 
cause consistent with the universality of that law had been ~ 
‘discovered for the irregularity, that conclusion would have had 
to be adopted, by reason of that one obstinate exception. We 
know that a cause was afterwards discovered which confirmed 
the theory of the universality of the law of gravity instead of 
shaking it—viz., the existence of a still more distant and dis- 
turbing planet; but that does not affect the former proposition. 
Take a case the other way. The Newtonian or corpuscular 
theory of light, making it an emission of some physical particles 
or vapour, as smells are, accounted for all, or nearly all, the 
phenomena then known. Gradually some occurred which no 
doctoring of the emission theory would explain; and so by 
degrees the undulatory theory was established, which does 
explain them all. 
It seems, however, that when we try to investigate the 
ultimate cause of all phenomena, we are at once ordered to 
accept a new form of logic and the dogmas of a new philo- 
sophy, that some cause which may serve to explain a few 
phenomena is therefore to be taken for granted as a sufficient 
explanation of them all, though it is clearly impossible for some 
of them. Take their favourite instance with reference to 
beauty. Bees frequent and fertilise some pretty-coloured 
flowers, though some of their favourite flowers are still the most 
colourless. ‘Therefore we are to take for granted that the 
beauty of all flowers, both in form and colour, has been pro- 
duced by insects admiring and frequenting them. . Then for 
the next step in this new-fangled logic: flowers are vege- 
tables ; therefore, the beauty of all vegetables, up to the oak 
and the Wellingtonia gigantea and the big trees of Columbia, 
