Chap. VI.] BEAUTY, HOW ACQUIRED. 255 



comes to be injurious, it will be modified ; or if it be 

 not so, the being will become extinct as myriads have 

 become extinct. 



Natural selection tends only to make each organic 

 being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the 

 other inhabitants of the same country with which it 

 comes into competition. And we see that this is the 

 standard of perfection attained under nature. The 

 endemic productions of New Zealand, for instance, are 

 perfect one compared with another ; but they are now 

 rapidly yielding before the advancing legions of plants 

 and animals introduced from Europe. Natural selection 

 will not produce absolute perfection, nor do we always 

 meet, as far as we can judge, with this high standard 

 under nature. The correction for the aberration of light 

 is said by Muller not to be perfect even in that most 

 perfect organ, the human eye. Helmholtz, whose 

 judgment no one will dispute, after describing in the 

 strongest terms the wonderful powers of the human eye, 

 acids these remarkable words : " That which we have 

 discovered in the way of inexactness and imperfection 

 in the optical machine and in the image on the retina, 

 is as nothing in comparison with the incongruities 

 which we have just come across in the domain of the 

 sensations. One might say that nature has taken 

 delight in accumulating contradictions in order to 

 remove all foundation from the theory of a pre-existing 

 harmony between the external and internal worlds." 

 If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a 

 multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this 

 same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both 

 sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect. 

 Can we consider the sting of the bee as perfect, which, 



