DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION. 43 



failed to satisfy the mind, there has grown up the lofty conception 

 of Universal Law, or Invariable Natural Order. And the 

 discovery has been made that natural laws depend, not on any 

 capricious arrangement, but on the rigid necessity of the case. 

 We say, for instance, that it is a law that light varies inversely as 

 the square of the distance ; and we find that in point of fact it 

 could 'not vary in any other manner. 



So, likewise, we observe that bees prefer blue to all other 

 colours, and we have reason to suppose that this is due to the 

 ultimate chemical constitution of the colouring matter of plants. 

 Changes in the colour of flowers occur in a regular order, yellow 

 flowers passing into pink, as their structure becomes modified to 

 receive the visits of insects ; and pink flowers passing with a 

 further modification of form, through red and purple to blue ; 

 but never in a reverse direction nor in any other order. There is 

 thus a correlated variation between colour and structure. Now 

 bees are the most highly specialised and the most flower-haunting 

 of insects ; and flowers, that they may secure fertilisation by the 

 visits of bees, have acquired, under the influence of the law of 

 natural selection, an ample secretion of attractive nectar. But 

 highly modified flowers tend to become purple or blue, hence bees 

 have grown to prefer these colours from their association with 

 abundant stores of food. 



In the same way, we find that law and order enter into conduct, 

 the supreme affair of human life. " Moral maxims are ultimately 

 " of the same nature as the maxims of any other craft ; if you 

 " wish to live altogether successfully, or happily, or worthily, you 

 " must do so and so." " Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 

 " also reap." After groping in the dark for many millenniums, 

 after long wanderings in the desert places of the earth, after 

 trying all things and after failing in all things, have moral maxims 

 been evolved. 



Theft and lying are found to be less good, less fit to be 

 gathered, than honesty and truth. Vice is unclean, and virtue 

 is pure. The polygamy of the Jews has yielded to the monogamy 

 of the Gentiles ; even as war in politics, and protection in com- 

 merce, are being displaced by arbitration and by free-trade. 



But after the moral sense, there will yet be evolved an in- 

 tellectual sense. As the various systems of religion have helped 

 to develope the former, the various systems of science are 

 destined to bring about the latter. Inasmuch as each structural 

 relation between the different parts of the brain, stands for some 

 constant connexion of phenomena in the experiences of the race, 

 as the teachings and methods of science become part of our 

 organisation, there will arise a number of intellectual insights, the 

 operation of which will ultimately be as certain and immediate as 

 our ordinary sense-perceptions. 



