DARWINISM 517 
written to me," says Darwin, "that he has gradually 
learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the 
Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capa- 
ble of self-development into other and needful forms, as 
to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply 
the voids caused by the action of His laws." 
And in closing his epoch-making book, Darwin called 
attention to the fact that, in the light of evolution, all 
phases of natural science possess more interest and more 
grandeur. 
" When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage 
looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his compre- 
hension; when we regard every production of nature as 
one which has had a long history; when we contemplate 
every complex structure and instinct as the summing up 
of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, in the 
same way as any great mechanical invention is the sum- 
ming up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even 
the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view 
each organic being, how far more interesting I speak from 
experience does the study of natural history become!" 
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed 
with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the 
bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms 
crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these 
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each 
other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a 
manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. 
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with 
Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by 
reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct 
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; 
