306 
What made 
the Beauty of 
iS'ature? 
hardly worth while to criticise them ; for a theory that only 
explains a few phenomena out of an immense class is no 
theory at all, or cannot be the right one. It may be some 
subordinate branch of the true theory, but it is thereby 
proved not to be the fundamental one. Nevertheless, there is 
really very little evidence of animals being influenced by 
sexual selection of beauty, though there is some ; and more 
as to strength where males have to fight for females. Even 
among men and women there is less than might have been 
expected. Nor is there much evidence, if any, that bees 
prefer what we think pretty flowers to plain ones in looking 
for honey. Of course they look for those which they know 
by instinct or experience to have the most or best honey. 
And it is singular that some of their most favourite flowers 
have very dull colours, notwithstanding the ages that they 
have been, according to this theory, improving them. I wrote 
this several years ago, and no Evolutionist has condescended 
to answer it, so far as I know ; nor the remarks of the late 
Professor Mozley, and my further ones on the general beauty 
of nature in phenomena beyond the possibility of evolution, 
including a great deal that remains latent until we bring it 
to light, either by simple discovery or as the result of some 
such process as cutting or polishing, which does not make, but 
only reveals, already existing beauties. The automatic cosmogo - 
nists believe they made themselves, but they never tell us 
how ; nor how the infinite variety of nature came, which is 
a striking contrast to the dead monotony and repetition that 
all human ornamentation soon runs into. At the same time 
the ugliness and offensiveness of internal animal organs which 
are not intended to be seen, and of all faeces, which are 
evidently intended to be got rid of, are instances of design by 
contrast with the beauty of most visible things, which again 
cannot be explained either by habit or by any process that 
can be called selection. 
I only touch on all these points very briefly, and omit some 
others altogether, because I have treated of them elsewhere. 
It must be borne in mind throughout that the Evolutionists' 
argument about change of circumstances producing all neces- 
sary changes of structure, and advance of intellectual and 
other powers, from the lowest up to the highest, is no solu- 
tion, but begs the whole question of the possibility of the 
smallest advance making itself, either to adapt itself to new 
circumstances, or to improve beauty, or to lay the founda- 
tion for future organs or powers which will be useless until 
they are complete. The very idea of power making or 
