Chap. VI.J , 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 en- 

 demic 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 selec- 

 tion will not produce absolute perfection, nor do we al- 

 ways meet, as far as we can judge, with this high stand- 

 ard under nature. The correction for the aberration of 

 light is said by Miiller 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, 

 adds 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 sensa- 

 tions. 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, when used 



