68 "Natural Selection" 



the simple cell can do things inexplicable by any law, 

 e.g. a living cell in a root fibre selects what it chooses as 

 nourishment while living : as soon as life goes, that 

 power goes. In other words, life has made a new 

 beginning in the world — it can do things that mechan- 

 ism and chemistry will not account for. And there 

 will be few of unbiased mind who will not agree with 

 this Nestor among naturalists that instinct was never 

 the result of experience, and that natural selection 

 could not possibly have been the cause of its origin. 

 Instinct is there from the first, let the mechanists 

 explain it how they may. Certainly the disciples of 

 Darwin have failed to do so. And this conclusion 

 helps us on towards the spiritual evolution of humanity. 

 As Fabre himself has said in one grand forecast : 

 " Mankind, alone capable of emerging from the slough 

 of the instincts, is bringing equity into being, is 

 creating it slowly, as its conception grows clearer. 

 Out of the sacred rushlight, so flickering as yet but 

 gaining strength from age to age, man will make a 

 flaming torch that will put an end among us to the 

 principle of the brutes, and, one day, utterly change the 

 face of society." 



