THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. 129 



are just as intelligible, and just as little difficult to 

 understand, as one." The answer to these cavils is 

 two-fold. In the first place, all human inquiry must 

 stop somewhere ; all our knowledge and all our inves- 

 tigation cannot take us beyond the limits set by the 

 finite and restricted character of our faculties, or de- 

 stroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like 

 its shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So 

 far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a 

 matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the 

 highest object that human beings can set before them- 

 selves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the 

 annihilation of the unknown ; but it is simply the un- 

 wearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little 

 further from our little sphere of action. 



I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit 

 the objection, that it is preposterous to trouble ourselves 

 about the history of the Roman Empire, because we do 

 not know anything positive about the origin and first 

 building of the city of Rome ! Would it be a fair ob- 

 jection to urge respecting the sublime discoveries of a 

 Newton, or a Kepler, those great philosophers, whose 

 discoveries have been of the profoundest benefit and 

 service to all men, — to say to them — " After all that 

 you have told us as to how the planets revolve, and how 

 they are maintained in their orbits, you cannot tell us 

 what is the cause of the origin of the sun, moon, and 

 stars. So what is the use of what you have done ? " 

 Yet these objections would not be one whit more pre- 

 posterous than the objections which have been made to 

 the " Origin of Species." Mr. Darwin, then, had a 

 perfect right to limit his inquiry as he pleased, and the 

 only question for us — the inquiry being so limited — is 

 6* 



