ny
distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot
hesitate to call it a '_puerile hypothesis_.'"[370]

I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther than this point,
though I have a strong feeling as though his conclusion is true, that
"the material universe is always and everywhere sustained and directed
by an infinite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least
inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that any attempt to deal
with such a question is going far beyond that sphere in which man's
powers may be at present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore,
that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent whether it is
correct or not.

Again, I should probably differ from Professor Mivart in finding this
mind inseparable from the material universe in which we live and move.
So that I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing and
directing the universe from a point as it were outside the universe
itself, nor yet of a universe as existing without there being
present--or having been present--in its every particle something for
which mind should be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But the
subject is far beyond me.

As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of natural selection, I
have only one fault to find with them, namely, that they do not speak
out with sufficient bluntness. The difficulty of showing the fallacy of
Mr. Darwin's position, is the difficulty of grasping a will-o'-the-wisp.
A concluding example will put this clearly before the reader, and at the
same time serve to illustrate the most tangible feature of difference
between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.

FOOTNOTES:

[365] 'Origin of Species,' p. 62.

[366] 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.

[367] 'Origin of Species,' p. 63.

[368] 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.

[369] 'Origin of Species,' p. 65.

[370] 'Lessons from Nature,' p. 300.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CASE OF THE MADEIRA BEETLES AS ILLUSTRATING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
THE EVOLUTION OF LAMARCK AND OF MR. CHARLES DARWIN--CONCLUSION.

An island of no very great extent is surrounded by a sea which cuts it
off for many miles from the nearest land. It lies a good deal exposed to
winds, so that the beetles which live upon it are in continual danger of
being blown out to sea if they fly during the hours and seasons when the
wind is blowing. It is found that an unusually large proportion of the
beetles inhabiting this island a