Note B to Page 295. 445 
say: “If the objector were to suppose that plants were originally 
fitted to years of various lengths, and that such only have swrutved to 
the present time . . . as could be accommodated to it (i. e. the 
actual cycle), we should reply that the assumption is too gratuitous 
and extravagant to require much consideration.” Was there ever a 
more curious exhibition of failure to perceive the importance of a 
‘logical possibility ”? And this at the very time when another mind 
was bestowing twenty years of labour on its “ consideration.” 
NOTE B TO PAGE 295. 
Since these remarks were delivered in my lectures as here 
printed, Mr. Mivart has alluded to the subject in the following 
and precisely opposite sense :— 
Many of the more noteworthy instincts lead us from manifesta- 
tions of purpose directed to the maintenance of the individual, to no 
less plain manifestations of a purpose directed to the preservation of 
the race. But a careful study of the interrelations and interdepen- 
dencies which exist between the various orders of creatures inhabiting 
this planet shows us yet a more noteworthy teleology—the existence 
of whole orders of such creatures being directed to the service of 
other orders in various degrees of subordination and augmentation 
respectively. This study reveals to us, as a fact, the enchainment of 
all the various orders of creatures in a hierarchy of activities, in 
harmony with what we might expect to find in a world the outcome 
of a First Cause possessed of intelligence and will‘. 
Having read this much, a Darwinian is naturally led to expect 
that Mr. Mivart is about to offer some examples of instincts 
or structures exemplifying what in the margin he calls the 
“Hierarchy of Ministrations.” Yet the only facts he proceeds 
to adduce are the sufficiently obvious facts, that the inorganic 
world existed before the organic, plants before herbivorous 
animals, these before carnivorous, and so on: that is to say, 
everywhere the condilions to the occurrence of any given stage 
of evolution preceded such occurrence, as it is obvious that they 
must, if, as of course it is not denied, the possibility of such 
occurrence depended on the precedence of such conditions. 
1 On Truth, p. 493. 
