n the woods for their nest; they built obediently in the
straw-thatched hives, and the same spoliation continued. A few days
before Hugh had visited a church in the neighbourhood, and had become
aware of a loud humming in the chancel. He found that an immense swarm
of bees had been hatched out in the roof, and were dying in hundreds,
in their attempt to escape through the closed windows. There were
plenty of apertures in the church through which they could have
escaped, if they had had any idea of exploration. But they were
content to buzz feebly up and down the panes, till strength failed
them, and they dropped down on to the sill among the bodies of their
brothers. An old man who was digging in the churchyard told Hugh that
the same thing had gone on in the church every summer for as long as he
could remember.

And yet one did not hesitate to accept the Darwinian theory, on the
word of scientific men, though the whole of visible and recorded
experience seemed to contradict it. Even stranger than the amazing
complexity of the whole scheme, was the incredible patience with which
the matter was matured. What was more wonderful yet, man, by his power
of observing the tendencies of nature, could make her laws to a certain
extent serve his own ends. He could, for instance, by breeding
carefully from short-legged sheep, in itself a fortuitous and
unaccountable variation from the normal type, produce a species that
should be unable to leap fences which their long-legged ancestors could
surmount; he could thus save himself the trouble of erecting higher
fences. This power in man, this faculty for rapid self-improvement,
differentiated him from all the beasts of the field; how had that
faculty arisen? it seemed a gap that no amount of development could
bridge. If nature had all been perfect, if its rules had been
absolutely invariable, if existence were conditioned by regular laws,
it would be easy enough to believe in God. And yet as it was, it
seemed so imperfect, and in some ways so unsatisfactory; so fortuitous
in certain respects, so wanting in prevision, so amazingly deliberate.
Such an infinity of care seemed lavished on the delicate structure of
the smallest insects and plants, such a prodigal fancy; and yet the
laws that governed them seemed so strangely incomplete, like a patient,
artistic, whimsical force, working on in spite of insuperable
difficulties. It looked sometimes like a conflict of minds, inste