STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 81 



commission, which each may have for himself, and 

 spend according to his fancy ; from this, indeed, income- 

 tax must be deducted; still there remains a little 

 margin of individual taste, and here, high up on this 

 narrow, inaccessible ledge of our souls, from year to 

 year a breed of not unprolific variations build where 

 reason cannot reach them, to despoil them; for de 

 gustibus non est disputandiom. 



Here we are as far as we can go. Fancy, which 

 sometimes sways so much and is swayed by so little, 

 and which sometimes, again, is so hard to sway, and 

 moves so little when it is swayed ; whose ways have 

 a method of their own, but are not as our ways — 

 fancy, lies on the extreme borderland of the realm 

 within which the writs of our thoughts run, and extends 

 into that unseen world wherein they have no jurisdic- 

 tion. Fancy is as the mist upon the horizon which 

 blends earth and sky; where, however, it approaches 

 nearest to the earth and can be reckoned with, it is 

 seen as melting into desire, and this as giving birth 

 to design and effort. As the nett result and outcome 

 of these last, living forms grow gradually but persis- 

 tently into physical conformity with their own inten- 

 tions, and become outward and visible signs of the 

 inward and spiritual faiths, or wants of faith, that 

 have been most within them. They thus very gradu- 

 ally, but none the less effectually, design themselves. 



In effect, therefore, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck 

 introduce uniformity into the moral and spiritual 

 worlds as it was already beginning to be introduced 

 into the physical. According to both these writers 



