第27章

And now, worshipper of final causes and the mere useful in nature, answer but one question, - Why this prodigal variety? All these Nudibranchs live in much the same way: why would not the same mould have done for them all? And why, again, (for we must push the argument a little further,) why have not all the butterflies, at least all who feed on the same plant, the same markings? Of all unfathomable triumphs of design, (we can only express ourselves thus, for honest induction, as Paley so well teaches, allows us to ascribe such results only to the design of some personal will and mind,) what surpasses that by which the scales on a butterfly's wing are arranged to produce a certain pattern of artistic beauty beyond all painter's skill? What a waste of power, on any utilitarian theory of nature! And once more, why are those strange microscopic atomies, the Diatomaceae and Infusoria, which fill every stagnant pool; which fringe every branch of sea-weed; which form banks hundreds of miles long on the Arctic sea-floor, and the strata of whole moorlands; which pervade in millions the mass of every iceberg, and float aloft in countless swarms amid the clouds of the volcanic dust; - why are their tiny shells of flint as fantastically various in their quaint mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery inexplicable on the conceited notion which, making man forsooth the centre of the universe, dares to believe that this variety of forms has existed for countless ages in abysmal sea-depths and untrodden forests, only that some few individuals of the Western races might, in these latter days, at last discover and admire a corner here and there of the boundless realms of beauty. Inexplicable, truly, if man be the centre and the object of their existence; explicable enough to him who believes that God has created all things for Himself, and rejoices in His own handiwork, and that the materialuniverse is, as the wise man says, "A platform whereon HisEternal Spirit sports and makes melody." Of all the blessings which the study of nature brings to the patient observer, let none, perhaps, be classed higher than this: that the further he enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, which Spenser saw and described in his great poem, the more he learns the awful and yet most comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, but to One greater, wiser, lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, amid the pomp of Nature's ever-busy rest, hears, as of old, "The Word of the Lord God walking among the trees of the garden in the cool of the day."One sight more, and we have done. I had something to say, had time permitted, on the ludicrous element which appears here and there in nature. There are animals, like monkeys and crabs, which seem made to be laughed at; by those at least who possess that most indefinable of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. As long as man possesses muscles especially formed to enable him to laugh, we have no right to suppose (with some) that laughter is an accident of our fallen nature; or to find (with others) the primary cause of the ridiculous in the perception of unfitness or disharmony. And yet we shrink (whether rightly or wrongly, we can hardly tell) from attributing a sense of the ludicrous to the Creator of these forms. It may be a weakness on my part; at least I will hope it is a reverent one: but till we can find something corresponding to what we conceive of the Divine Mind in any class of phenomena, it is perhaps better not to talk about them at all, but observe a stoic "epoche," waiting for more light, and yet confessing that our own laughter is uncontrollable, and therefore we hope not unworthy of us, at many a strange creature and strange doing which we meet, from the highest ape to the lowest polype.