£76 Thoughts on oily Conceptions [April, 
such or such a creature ?” is a question too commonly asked 
— and not by children only — of the zoologist or the botanist, 
When we reply that to the best of our belief and knowledge 
the animal or plant in question is of no use, but simply an 
unmitigated nuisance, the most charitable construction put 
upon our answer is that we are too proud to confess our 
ignorance. Like the doCtrine of organic perfection, this 
dogma is not easily traceable to any substantial basis, but, 
having once become a current article of popular faith, its 
extirpation is proving a difficult task. To us it appears, in 
its very essence, irreverent. If the Creator had, e.g ., made 
the mosquito, or the guinea-worm, or the Lucilia hominovora 
to be of service to man, we may depend upon it that they 
would not have been sources of annoyance. Even a human 
invention, the produce of exceedingly finite reason, is con- 
demned if, along with certain and even great good, it effects 
abundant mischief. How much more if the good be problem- 
atic, and the evil open and palpable ? Shall we, then, 
adduce what is notoriously defective as an instance of Divine 
“ contrivance ”? One thing we may certainly conclude, 
viz., that if a maximum of earthly enjoyment and the 
minimisation of earthly suffering had been the objects of the 
Creator the world would have assuredly been constituted 
very differently from what it is. When we know what His 
objects really were it will be quite time enough to indulge in 
teleology and to indite “ Bridgewater Treatises.” 
II. THOUGHTS ON OUR CONCEPTIONS OF 
PHYSICAL LAW.* 
By Prof. Francis E. Nipher, St. Louis, Mo. 
Oil 
f N the short time at my disposal I wish to point out some 
reasons for the more general cultivation of a certain 
cardinal virtue which is so rare that I fear it has no 
name. Perhaps the words Intellectual Modesty would come 
as near as any others in expressing what I mean. The 
* Abstract of an Address before the Alumni of the State University of Iowa, 
June ig, 1878; delivered at Kansas City, December 23, 1878, and which 
appears in the “ Kansas City Review.” 
