cts are never fairly met. At
least half the plants in the world have not bright-coloured or beautiful
flowers; and Mr. Darwin has lately arrived at the wonderful
generalization, that flowers have become beautiful solely to attract
insects to assist in their fertilization. He adds, "I have come to this
conclusion from finding it an invariable rule, that when a flower is
fertilized by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured corolla." Here is a
most wonderful case of beauty being _useful_, when it might be least
expected. But much more is proved; for when beauty is of no use to the
plant it is not given. It cannot be imagined to do any harm. It is
simply not necessary, and is therefore withheld! We ought surely to have
been told how this fact is consistent with beauty being "an end in
itself," and with the statement of its being given to natural objects
"for its own sake."

_How new Forms are produced by Variation and Selection._

Let us now consider another of the popular objections which the Duke of
Argyll thus sets forth:--

"Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered any law or rule,
according to which new Forms have been born from old Forms. He does not
hold that outward conditions, however changed, are sufficient to account
for them.... His theory seems to be far better than a mere theory--to be
an established scientific truth--in so far as it accounts, in part at
least, for the success and establishment and spread of new Forms _when
they have arisen_. But it does not even suggest the law under which, or
by or according to which, such new Forms are introduced. Natural
Selection can do nothing, except with the materials presented to its
hands. It cannot select except among the things open to selection....
Strictly speaking, therefore, Mr. Darwin's theory is not a theory on the
Origin of Species at all, but only a theory on the causes which lead to
the relative success or failure of such new forms as may be born into
the world." ("Reign of Law," p. 230.)

In this, and many other passages in his work, the Duke of Argyll sets
forth his idea of Creation as a "Creation by birth," but maintains that
each birth of a new form from parents differing from itself, has been
produced by a special interference of the Creator, in order to direct
the process of development into certain channels; that each new species
is in fact a "special creation," although brought into existence through
the ordinary laws of reproduction. H