Importance of the study of the nature of man—The nature of man as the foundation of morality—Greek worship of human nature—Matriopathy of ancient philosophers—Rationalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Degradation of human nature by religious doctrines—Influence of these conceptions on actual life and on art—Reaction of the Reformation against the degradation of human nature—Mutilation of the human body by primitive races

Notwithstanding the real advance made by science, expressions of discontentment with it are familiar. Science, it is said, no doubt has ameliorated the material conditions of human life, but is powerless to solve those moral and philosophical questions that interest cultured people so deeply. In this region science has done no more than to destroy the foundations of religion. It has robbed mankind of the consolations of religion without being able to replace them with anything more exact or more enduring.

It cannot be disputed that a general uneasiness disturbs the world of to-day. Although his environment is most favourable to the fulfilment of many of his capacities, man finds himself without orientation when he has to determine the course of his life, or to explain to himself his true relation to such categories of humanity as family, nation, race and human race. This uneasiness reveals itself as discontentment, and it leads to pessimism or to mysticism. Most of the philosophical systems of the nineteenth century were steeped in melancholy, and led straight to a denial of the possibility of happiness and even to an advocacy of extinction. The frequency of suicide has increased greatly among all the civilised peoples. There is no need to tabulate proofs of a notorious fact.^[1]

A remedy for this malady of the age has been sought in the attempt to restore religious and mystical faith. On all sides have sprung up efforts to found new religions or to amend the old. Many defenders of science have gone the length of admitting its incapacity to solve the problem of the existence of man; they have held that that problem was insoluble for the human mind. Such a depressing conclusion has been formulated in spite of many attempts to reach a rational conception of the universe and of man.

It is no new thing to ask if there be nothing but faith to control human conduct and to lead mankind towards universal happiness. Men of science and philosophers, in many ages, have thought that human nature itself could provide all the materials for a rational morality.

In the ancient world and, above all, among the Greeks, human nature was held in high esteem. The Oriental races, predecessors of the Greeks in civilisation, generally represented their gods as fantastic or grotesque beings, composites of men and animals. The Greeks made gods in their own image, giving them all the most beautiful qualities of the human race. Such a conception was a dominant factor in ancient Greek life and civilisation. The adoration of Man embraced the human body, and led to the despising of every mode of tampering with the natural body. Thus, for instance, shaving^[2] of the face was regarded as a humiliation, for a smooth chin gave an unnatural, womanish cast to the face of a man.

The adoration of human nature by the Greeks appeared in Greek plastic art, and was the cause of its excellence. The ideal of art was to copy, in the most faithful way, the most perfect example of the human body, and Greek artists made measurements of the body so accurately that modern science has confirmed their chief results.^[3] As sculpture most completely realised the Greek ideal of the human body, it became almost a national art among the Greeks.

Greek philosophy had an equally high opinion of human nature, of the human body, and of representations of the human body. Just as Greek art aimed at the presentation of the body of man, so Greek philosophy proclaimed the nobility of all human qualities, and inculcated the doctrine of a harmonious development of all sides of human nature.^[4] Such a doctrine was formulated by Plato, and became a fundamental principle of the Old Academy; the New Academy assumed it, and handed it on to the Sceptics. According to Xenocrates (fourth century), who belonged to the Old Academy, happiness consisted not only in the possession of human virtue, but in the accomplishment of all natural acts.^[5]

The principle of a worship of human nature is in itself rather vague, and it is not surprising that disputes and contradictions arose in relation to its application. Thus Plato excluded pleasure from his conception of the good, while Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, held a contrary opinion. For the latter pleasure was the natural motive of human action, and its attainment was associated as intimately with the perfect life as beauty and health were associated with the perfect human body.^[6]

Under the name Matriopathy there arose, in the ancient world, a doctrine the object of which was the study of the goal of natural morality. This doctrine was held by many philosophers, but these applied it to the details of actual life in very different fashions. Thus, for the Stoics, the summum bonum and happiness, the most lofty aim, could not be found except by conforming life to nature. Conduct was to be brought into harmony with the rational order of nature in such a fashion that every conscious and rational being would perform no actions that could not be deduced from the general law.^[7] The same principle of a life in harmony with nature led the Epicureans to the conclusion that “pleasure is a natural good, that is to say, a condition conformable with nature, and so bringing with it intrinsic contentment.”^[8] Setting out from the same fundamental principle, the theories of the Stoics and Epicureans led in opposite directions.

The Roman philosophers adopted the principle of a life strictly natural. Seneca, for instance,^[9] enunciated the maxim: “Take nature as your guide, for so reason bids you and advises you; to live happily is to live naturally.”

Without following through the centuries the development of the idea in detail, I may content myself with saying that resort has been made to it, wherever there was sought, outside the sanction of religion, a rational principle to guide human conduct. It recurs even among those convinced Christians who rebelled against the asceticism and hatred of human nature that became prevalent in the early centuries of the Christian era.

The Greek conception of a life in harmony with nature found its most complete development in the rationalism of the Renaissance, and of the centuries that followed it. Hutcheson,^[10] a Scotch philosopher of the eighteenth century, insisted that right was with the thinkers of the naturalistic school, and that the realisation of their ideal was to be considered as the highest virtue. He thus placed himself directly against the Scotch clergy who asserted the greatest contempt for human nature. Buckle^[11] proclaimed that it was a high honour for Hutcheson to have been the first Scotchman to raise his voice publicly against the degrading views of his time.

The French philosophers of the eighteenth century, who sought to replace the religious foundations of conduct by rational principles, again had recourse to human nature. Not long before the French Revolution there appeared a treatise in three volumes, written by Baron d’Holbach, and entitled, “Universal Morality, or the Duties of Man based on Nature.”^[12] Frankly a materialist and atheist, that writer laid it down as an axiom that “to be universal, the moral law must be founded on the essential nature of man, that is to say, on the properties and qualities found constantly in the human being, and that distinguish him from other animals.” To be well assured, “morality presumes a science of human nature.”^[13]

The principle of ancient philosophy reappeared in the works of rationalists of the nineteenth century. Wilhelm von Humboldt declared that “the ultimate ideal of man, the ideal prescribed for him by the irrefutable and eternal laws of reason, consisted in a development as harmonious as possible of all his qualities in their entirety.” The modern historian, Lecky,^[14] defines the aim of life as the full development of all that exists in the proportions determined by nature.

Philosophers and historians are not alone in the adoption of Greek rationalism. Many naturalists, and among these some very distinguished authors, have spoken in the same sense. It is easy to see the Greek principle in such phrases as those of Darwin^[15] when he wrote: “The term general good may be defined as the means by which the greatest possible number of individuals can be reared in full vigour and health, with all their faculties perfect, under the conditions to which they are exposed.”

Georges Seidlitz,^[16] an advocate of the great English naturalist, got still nearer to the conception of the ancients. According to him, the moral and rational life consisted in “the accomplishment of all the functions of the body, in due but full proportion.”

Herbert Spencer,^[17] in analysing the aim of existence, came to the conclusion that morality should be adjusted so as to make life as full and complete as possible. As a criterion of physical perfection, the English philosopher would accept only the complete devotion of all the organs to the accomplishment of all their functions, while his criterion of moral perfection was contribution to the general good. These views are plainly, if not exactly, expressions of the Greek ideal.

While, then, rational philosophers in all the ages have sought the foundation of morality in human nature itself, and have held human nature to be good, or even perfect, many religious doctrines have displayed a very different view. Human nature was regarded as being composed of two hostile elements, a body and a soul. The soul alone was to be honoured, while the body was regarded as the vile source of evils. Such a view led to the flagellations and torturings of the body which form so strange and so widespread a phenomenon. The Hindu fakirs who swing themselves on hooks, the dervishes and Mussulman Assouans who beat in their skulls with clubs, the Russian Skoptsy who emasculate themselves, and many other instances make it plain that natural perfection is not taken as the basis for conduct.

Buddha^[18] in the clearest way showed his belief that human nature was base. Coming out from the apartments of the women, there came to him a “vivid idea of the impurity of the body, a feeling of repulsion from it, and of blame of it; regarding his own body and seeing its wretchedness, he began to despise it, and to formulate conceptions of impurity and purity; from the sole of the feet to the crown of the head, to the limit of the brain, he saw that the body was born in impurity, came from impurity, and always let itself be drawn to impurity.” These reflections led him to the conclusion: “What wise man, having regarded his own body, will not see in it an enemy?”

Towards the end of the old world, the Greek theory of human nature yielded to a very different conception. The opposition between the opinions of the Stoics on morality, and their admiration of human nature, led Seneca, one of the last Roman Stoics and a celebrated contemporary of Jesus Christ, to break completely away from the ancient doctrine. Convinced of the moral weakness and imperfection of man, and of the persisting power of evil, Seneca declared that human nature contained a vicious and essentially evil element. This element was seated in the body, which he regarded as so essentially vile that it is to be despised. Our body was no more than the dwelling of the soul, its temporary home, a place in which it cannot be at rest. The body was a burden which the soul would be rid of, a prison-house from which it would escape. According to Seneca^[19] the soul must wrestle with the body, for the body brings to it nothing but suffering, while the soul is essentially pure and spotless, and as much above the body as divinity is above matter.

A dualism still more pronounced was characteristic of the early Christian view of human nature, and led to the depreciation of the body as compared with the soul. In the fourth and fifth centuries of our era such a view was so dominant that a struggle against the material side of our nature became a rule of life. The most absolute asceticism spread throughout the Christian world.^[20] A struggle against hunger, thirst, and desire for sleep, rejection of all pleasures that come from impressions of sight, of hearing, or of the palate, and, above all, abstention from sexual intercourse, became, in the opinion of believers, the true aim of human life. The conviction that human nature was essentially corrupt led to a declaration of war against it; all the pleasures were forbidden, even the most innocent of them being thought vicious. What could be more in contrast with the calm and joyous philosophy of the Greeks, for whom there did not exist the idea of a struggle against the supposed corruption and imperfection of man? The dualistic theory made such demands on its proselytes that these, absorbed in the salvation of their souls, sank from the physical point of view to the level of wild beasts. Hermits resorted to the lairs of animals, abandoned their clothing and went about naked with shaggy and disordered hair. In Mesopotamia and a part of Syria there arose a sect of eaters of grass; these were people who had no dwellings and who ate neither bread nor vegetables, but wandered on the hills and fed on the herbage. Cleanliness of the body was regarded as an indication of corruptness of the soul, and among the most highly venerated of the saints were those who took no care of the body. Athanasius relates with approval that when St. Antony, the father of monks, became old he never washed his feet.^[21]

Such doctrines soon brought about a most serious perversion of the innate instincts of the human race. The senses of family and of society became so weakened that fanatical Christians were more than indifferent to their kinsmen and countrymen. One saint was venerated because he was hard and cruel only to his relatives. It is told of the Abbot Siseuss that on a believer asking to be received into the convent, he inquired if the suppliant had any one akin to him. “I have only a son,” said the Christian. “Well, then,” said the abbot, “take your son and cast him into the river, for thus only may you become a monk.” The father set about to do the bidding of the abbot, and it was only at the last moment that the order was recalled. For admission into a Christian community it was necessary to renounce one’s country.^[22]

Such ideas have struck a deep and enduring root. In the opinion of the ministers of the Scotch Church of the seventeenth century, according to Buckle,^[23] there was nothing so surprising as that the earth could contain itself in the presence of that horrid spectacle, man, and that it did not gape, as in former days, to swallow him in the midst of his wickedness. For certainly, in the created universe, there could be nothing so monstrous and so horrible as man.

It was to be expected that when such conceptions prevailed, celibacy and repudiation of the reproductive instinct should have been made obligatory on the clergy. The words, reported by St. Matthew (xix. 11, 12), that “there be eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” were interpreted by some as implying a voluntary renunciation of marriage, while others insisted on the literal meaning and in consequence mutilated themselves more or less completely. The breasts of women were removed to eradicate the maternal instincts. But it is only the sect of Skoptsy, by no means a small body in Russia, that applies the gospel command in this stringent fashion. The wish announced by St. Paul (Corinthians vii. 7), “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I; but if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn,” soon became a command, and since the fourth century the Catholic Church has advocated celibacy of the clergy, although it was not enforced until the eleventh century (under Gregory VII.). A low view of human nature has survived in the Catholic Church even to our own times. Pope Leo XIII., in his “Encyclical on Freemasons,” proclaimed it.^[24] “Human nature,” he said, “was contaminated by the Fall, and as it is therefore much more prone to vice than to virtue, in order to attain virtue it is absolutely necessary to restrain the wild impulses of the soul, and to control the appetites by reason.”

Art has reflected the Christian conception of human nature. Sculpture, which played so great a part in the ancient world, and which was intimately associated with Greek ideals, began to decline rapidly in the Christian era. It lasted longer in the Roman Empire of the East, but in Italy it was almost completely forgotten by the eighth century. Painting survived, but not without undergoing an extraordinary degeneration. All the Italian works of art of the Carlovingian period, displayed the utmost indifference to natural form, and a loss of the sense of harmony and beauty. Later on, Italian art fell lower still. “No one dreamed any longer of studying nature or of observing the human body. An epoch in which the interference of supernatural forces was generally accepted, and in which the conception of the universe was founded on a contrast between the natural and the supernatural, could not admit in its art the rule of natural law or a natural order of events.”^[25]

The intimate connection between the depreciation of human nature due to Christian doctrine and the inferiority of the art of the middle ages cannot be denied. Taine^[26] writes of the period as follows: “If one considers the stained-glass windows or the images in the cathedrals, or the rude paintings, it appears as if the human race had become degenerate and its blood had been impoverished; pale saints, distorted martyrs, virgins with flat chests, feet too long and bony hands, hermits withered and unsubstantial, Christs that look like crushed and bleeding earthworms, processions of figures that are wan, and stiffened, and sad, upon whom are stamped all the deformities of misery and all the shrinking timidity of the oppressed.”

The art of the middle ages fell lower and lower until the Renaissance, with its return to the Greek ideal, brought new vigour. The great masters of the Renaissance were in addition scientific men who had studied mathematics and who employed the technique of mensuration; such were Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, and others. The return to the Greek ideals and to nature brought with it the taste for beauty.

When the ancient spirit was born again, its influence reached science and even religion, and the Reformation was a defence of human nature. The Lutheran doctrines resumed the principle of a “development as complete as possible, of all the natural powers” of man, and saw in that ideal a guide for humanity. Compulsory celibacy was abolished, and free play was given to all the tendencies in conformity with the laws of nature.^[27]

Besides those whose religion led them to despise the human body, there have been many savage races and tribes who have practised mutilations of the body. It would be a long list were I to set out all the modes in which the human body has been disfigured. Treatises on Ethnography and the volumes of travellers contain a multitude of details of this sort. The hair, the teeth and the lips have been subjected to treatment with the object of making them as unlike the natural condition as is possible. Many of the lower races discolour their teeth, or remove some of them, or file them to points. Others insert in the lips pieces of wood, of stone, or of bone. A whole chapter might be occupied with an account of the disfiguring devices of tattooers. The skull, the breasts, and the feet, have all been subjected to deforming treatment.

Although there is not enough evidence to set down these practices to the existence of definite and self-conscious religious or philosophic doctrine, it is at least certain that the people among whom they occur are far from revering human nature in the fashion of the Greeks, but rather attempt to distort it in accordance with their own taste. Discontent with the natural conditions of existence is, as we have seen, so widespread that there is good reason for an inquiry as to the existence of some general principle underlying this diversity of opinion regarding human nature. I have already shown that this question of human nature has for long interested mankind, and has shared largely in the formation of ideas of the good and the beautiful. It is not too soon to submit the problem to rational investigation, using those rigid methods of science which have been learned in our epoch. I shall try to give an exposition of human nature in its strength and in its weakness. But before passing to man, I shall survey the lower forms of life, hoping to fix some landmarks that will be useful in the study of the larger problem.

The organised world before the appearance of man on the earth—Absence of a law of universal progress—Fertilisation of vanilla—The part played by insects in the fertilisation of orchids—Mechanism by which insects carry the pollen of orchids—Habits of fossorial wasps—Harmonies in nature—Useless organs—Rudiments of the pollinia of orchids—Disharmonies in nature—Unadapted insects—Aberration of instincts—Perversion of sexual instinct—Attraction of insects by light—Luminous insects—Law of natural selection—Happiness and unhappiness in the organised world

Long before man appeared on the earth animals and plants were distributed over it. Some of these were endowed with but vague senses, while others had well-developed instincts, and some even a certain degree of intelligence which they applied for their self-preservation and for the propagation of their own kind.

Many species, well adapted for the resistance of external influences, have survived from very early times to the present day. In the Carboniferous period birds and mammals did not yet exist, and the thick forests, with undergrowths of gigantic ferns, were inhabited by large numbers of articulated animals, amongst which were scorpions and insects. The scorpions of that time resemble in every way those that actually live at the present day in tropical countries; and amongst the insects of that early epoch were some very like the cockroaches of to-day. Certain tree-like ferns of the present time are also very similar to those of the coal period. Amongst the animals the bodies of which are protected by a shell, such as foraminifera and mollusca, certain species have survived even from an earlier time than the coal period.

In contrast with this extraordinary survival, there are instances of the complete disappearance of numbers of species of animals and plants. In early times, during the Tertiary epoch, the virgin forests of Europe were inhabited by a large number of monkeys, of which fossil remains are now found, especially in Greece. These formerly existed even in Europe, and some anthropoid apes (Dryopithecus) have left traces in the tertiary deposits of France.^[28] These animals, notwithstanding that their organisation was superior to that of scorpions and cockroaches, have not been able to adapt themselves to the altered conditions of modern Europe. A similar fate has come upon some of the higher mammals, such as the mammoth and the mastodon.

These facts do not bear testimony to the prevalent idea that there exists in nature a law of universal progress tending to the production of organisms more and more perfect from the point of view of complexity of structure. It is incontestable that forms higher in the scale of life have developed only after the appearance of lower forms. But it does not follow that development always takes a progressive march. Man is one of the later species that have appeared upon the earth, but there are others of still more recent date. It is very probable that certain species of lice have appeared subsequent to man, particularly the clothes-louse (Pediculus vestimenti). Amongst the true parasites which live only in the human body are some that have acquired their specific characters after the appearance of man. Such are certain tape-worms and microbes, such as a species of gonococcus. It is therefore amongst parasites and not to man that we must look for the latest products of creation.

In nature, then, there is no blind tendency towards progress. Organisms almost innumerable are born every day with variable characters. Those amongst them which are adapted to existing circumstances survive and produce offspring like themselves, but many do not reach maturity, and, living only for a short time, die without leaving issue.

To give the reader a better idea of adaptations and of their importance to living creatures, it will, perhaps, be as well to devote some space to an account of examples of them. Amongst organisms that attract our attention by their pleasing aspect, there are not many that can rival flowering plants. Every one admires the great beauty of the blossom of orchids. There can be no doubt that these flowers have not been developed to satisfy the æsthetic tastes of man, for the simple reason that orchids existed for a long time before man’s appearance.

Among orchids there is one which, for more than half a century, has been cultivated by man in many tropical countries. This is the Vanilla, the fruit of which produces one of the sweetest of spices.

In former days the pods of only the wild vanilla, which is an undergrowth of the forests of Mexico and South America, were gathered. But the employment of vanilla to flavour chocolate has rendered its artificial culture lucrative; consequently the plant has been transported to several warm countries where it could be acclimatised. It has flourished and borne numerous blossoms, but it has never produced fruit from which alone the aroma is obtained. As the question of the sterility of the vanilla was of great practical interest to the cultivator, the matter was investigated, and it was found that the flower remained sterile because the female and male parts could not come in contact. The pistils and stamens of the flower are well developed, but between these sexual organs is a membrane which prevents fertilisation. After this discovery was made, the idea occurred that the pollen of the vanilla flower might be transferred artificially to the stigma of the pistil so as to bring about “artificial” fertilisation. A young black slave, Edmond Albius, a native of Réunion, discovered in 1841 a practical method by which the male and female elements of the vanilla could be put in contact; and from this discovery there came a great extension of the cultivation of the orchid in many countries. At a certain period a small bamboo point or the tooth of a comb is introduced into the vanilla flower, and in this way, in a short time, a quantity of flowers may be fertilised and so made capable of bearing mature pods.^[29]

In the original home of the vanilla the intervention of man is unnecessary. In Guiana and Mexico fertilisation of the flower is the work of small bees (of the genus Melipona). They frequent the vanilla flowers to extract nectar, the material of their honey. Small humming-birds also hover over the vanilla blossoms, and by introducing their bills into the sexual organs of the flowers bring about contact of the male and female elements.

Sterility of the vanilla in the countries to which it has been introduced, before the employment of artificial fecundation, is easily explained by the fact that in these countries there are no insects nor humming-birds capable of transporting the pollen.

But it is not only the vanilla that requires the co-operation of living beings to produce its fruits. It is the case with many other orchids. In the flowers of these the pollen is massed together and cannot be transported by the air. It needs the aid of insects, as had already been pointed out by Sprengell in the eighteenth century, and above all by Darwin, whose splendid investigations are the basis of the following passages.^[30]

Insects, belonging to different groups, such as bees, wasps, flies, certain beetles, and many butterflies and moths, visit orchids to sip the nectar produced by the plants and stored in definite parts of the flowers. In order that their proboscis may reach the stores of sweet juice, the insects inevitably touch first the upper parts of the flowers, where the anthers are present. The pollen grains are clustered in masses, known as pollinia, and these adhere to the body of the visiting insect by means of an adhesive fluid which is secreted by an organ of the flower known as the rostellum. In this way the pollinia adhere firmly, it may be to the proboscis of butterflies, or to the head or any other part of the body of insects. They can leave the flower and fly away without losing the adhering pollinia, and in this manner they serve as the agents for sexual contact and for fertilisation of the orchids. Ménière relates that a person who kept bees near the garden of the Faculté de Toulouse complained that they returned from the garden with their heads covered with tiny yellow bodies which he was unable to clean off from them. It was easy to recognise in these bodies the pollinia of orchids very firmly attached to the bees’ heads.^[31]

When an insect, bearing these pollinia, introduces itself into another flower of the same species of orchid, it inevitably comes in contact with the female apparatus, more particularly with the viscous surface of the stigma. Some of the grains of pollen contained in the pollen-mass adhere to the stigma and are thus enabled to fertilise the ovule. This carriage of pollen from one flower to another brings about a crossing which is necessary for the production of good seed. On the other hand, the seed which is the result of self-fertilisation of a flower is inferior.

An examination of the structure and form of the flowers of many orchids show that they are adapted in a truly marvellous way to the visits of insects that convey pollen. In each part of these flowers one can discern some useful arrangement to secure cross-fertilisation.

For the proper transmission of pollen it is necessary that the pollinia should adhere very firmly to the body of the insects, and that the viscous substance which holds them together should have time to solidify. It is thus of great advantage to the plant if the insects remain for a considerable time on the flower. In several orchids the nectar is not easily accessible, and frequently the insect has to search for a long time before finding what it desires, and sometimes it even has to pierce a membranous covering before reaching the fluid. The operation takes a certain time, and this is long enough to allow the mucus by which the pollinia adhere to the insect to set firmly.

In the case of orchids the mucus of which sets instantaneously, there is no reason for the visit of the insect to be prolonged. In such cases the nectar is easy to extract, and the insect finds it without loss of time.

Darwin, after describing these facts, proceeds to say:^[32]

“In these five species” (in which the viscid matter “is so adhesive that it serves to attach the pollinia firmly to the insects without getting hard”), “and in these alone, we find copious nectar ready stored for rapid suction in open nectaries. On the other hand, whenever the viscid matter gets hard by exposure for a short time to the air, it would manifestly be advantageous to the plant if insects were delayed in obtaining the nectar; and in all such species the nectar is lodged within intercellular spaces, so that it can be obtained only by the inner membrane being penetrated at several points, and this will require time. If this double relation is accidental, it is a fortunate accident for the plants; but I cannot believe it to be so, and it appears to me one of the most wonderful cases of adaptation which has ever been recorded.”

Some orchids secrete instead of nectar a clear liquid like water. This fluid is collected in a petal inserted at the lower part of the flower and shaped into a deep cup-shaped receptacle. It does not attract insects, but by wetting their wings compels them to leave the flower by a different exit which passes close to the reproductive organs (i.e., the anther and the stigma). The soft linings of the cup are greedily devoured by certain insects, particularly by bees. Dr. Cruger, who observed this, has often seen bees fall into the cup whereupon their wings became so wet as to prevent their flying away, and they have been obliged to get out by the channel that carries off the waste from the reservoir. As the saturated bees creep along the narrow passage after their involuntary immersion, they come inevitably in contact with the stigma and the masses of pollen. The latter adhere to the bodies of the bees and can be conveyed to the sticky stigma of a neighbouring flower.

In other orchids (Catasetum, Fig. 1), the male elements are discharged by a spring-like arrangement on the body of insects. When certain parts of the flowers are touched, the pollinia are thrown off like arrows, which, in the place of the barbs, have viscid swellings. “The insect, disturbed by so sharp a blow, or after having eaten its fill, flies sooner or later away to a female plant and, whilst standing in the same position as before, the pollen-bearing end of the arrow is inserted into the stigmatic cavity, and a mass of pollen is left on its viscid surface.”^[33]

After giving detailed descriptions of the cross-fertilisation of flowers by such peculiar means, Darwin makes the following remark: “Who would have been bold enough to have surmised that the propagation of a species depended on so complex, so apparently artificial, and yet so admirable an arrangement?”^[34]

One orchid (Herminium monorchis, Fig. 2), which bears very small flowers, is remarkable for the way in which it is fertilised by insects. Only very small insects are able to penetrate the flowers. The space being very limited these minute insects can enter the flower only in a particular way, and at one of the corners. This causes the pollinia to become attached always to the same place, which is on the outer side of one of the two front legs. When the insect, the carrier of the pollinia, enters a second flower, it can scarcely fail to fertilise the stigma, which is on the corresponding side. Darwin said that it would be difficult to find a case in which there was so marvellously complete an adaptation to a very peculiar mode of fertilisation as the little flower of Herminium.

In addition to orchids, there are other flowers the organisation of which is adapted in a remarkable way to fertilisation by insects. But to find perfect harmony in the nature of living beings it is not necessary to confine our observations to flowers. The animal world furnishes us with numerous examples. To avoid going into the details of these, I shall content myself with a description of the most remarkable instances.

Every one has seen, flying near the ground, small, slender, and pretty wasps. From time to time these bury themselves in the earth or sand, and re-appear in a few minutes. These are the fossorial wasps, the interesting habits of which have been studied by Mr. J. H. Fabre, of Avignon. They are not gregarious, but lead solitary lives and differ in their habits from their congeners. Bees feed their larvæ with honey and pollen which they take to them during the whole period of their development. Wasps are carnivorous, predatory insects, and bring their spoils to their brood of soft and feeble larvæ which are unable to provide for themselves. Bees and most wasps look after the welfare of their young ones in the fashion of human parents in nurseries.

Fossorial wasps act differently; they never see their young. They lay their eggs in burrows, sunk in the soil and hermetically sealed. The larvæ are hatched underground and are never seen by the mother. Provision sufficient for their development, however, is made in advance. Before depositing eggs, the females sink the burrows, and fill them with the spoils of the chase, which consist sometimes of spiders and sometimes of crickets or other insects. Each species of fossorial wasps preys on a particular kind of insect or on its allies, for the purpose of provisioning the burrows. These wasps are most fastidious in the choice of their food, and behave like collectors whose interest is only in a single or a few species of small animals. Léon Dufour, the well-known entomologist, was much struck by the ability displayed by certain wasps (Cerceris, Fig. 3) in seeking out and capturing the pretty beetles of the genus Buprestis, which he had great difficulty in finding himself. In making a study of these beetles he collected the material from the burrows of Cerceris, and so avoided the laborious task of obtaining them in the natural state of freedom. The burrows were filled with motionless, but perfectly well preserved, Buprestes. Although dead Coleoptera dried up in a short time, those recovered from the burrows remained in a good state of preservation for weeks. Léon Dufour came to the conclusion that the Cerceris kill their prey, but inject into them some antiseptic liquid which perfectly preserves their flesh and intestines.

J. H. Fabre pursued the study of the habits of fossorial wasps further. He ascertained that the captured insects were not dead, but only paralysed. The continuance of the function of certain organs demonstrated that the Buprestes, the weevils and other small creatures collected in the burrows of fossorial wasps, were alive. They could even perform some slight movements, but they were incapable of locomotion, and so could not escape. The mechanism of this paralysis, as far as could be ascertained by Fabre, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in nature. The fossorial wasps, guided by their instinct, immediately after having seized an insect or spider, bury their sting in the nervous centre which controls the movements of the legs. When animals with soft bodies, such as spiders and young crickets, are attacked, the operation does not present any difficulties. But Coleoptera in general, and the Buprestes and weevils in particular, are furnished with a very hard covering which cannot be perforated by the small and slender sting of a fossorial wasp. To gain their object the wasps probe exactly between the first and second pair of legs in the median line of the under surface of the thorax. The skin is thinner at this spot, and they introduce their sting into the ganglia from which arise the nerves of the legs. In the case with the Buprestes these ganglia are set close to one another, and a single prick suffices to affect the nervous centres of three pairs of legs. Once the sting has been inserted in this way the Buprestis becomes paralysed, but lives for many days. “The Cerceris which preys on Coleoptera,” writes Fabre,^[35] “appears to have made its choice according to the dictates of an exact physiology and anatomy. It is impossible to see in its proceedings the results of happy chance; more than chance is required to explain adaptations so precise.”

After having filled the burrow with a sufficient quantity of insects or spiders, fossorial wasps lay their eggs and carefully close up the entrance. In due course the larva is hatched, and devours the food that it finds close at hand. If the gathered insects were not paralysed, they could easily escape from their prison; if they were dead, putrefaction or desiccation (according to circumstances) would render them unfit for the larvæ. It is therefore sheer necessity that is the factor in the development of this marvellous instinct that induces the fossorial wasps to attack the nervous centres of their prey. When one insect has been devoured, the larva proceeds to another, and so on, until it is fully grown, whereupon it envelops itself in a case that protects it during the winter and following spring. In summer it changes at first into a chrysalis, and later into a perfect insect. It frees itself from the cocoon, takes to flight, and enters upon life like that of its mother, which it has never seen.

Of the harmonious phenomena in nature it is indeed difficult to find other examples so perfect as those of the habits of these fossorial wasps, or of the mechanism for the fertilisation of orchids. These harmonies in nature are constantly met with in the world of living beings, and it is not astonishing that they have for a long time attracted the attention of many observers and philosophers. As it seemed impossible to attribute them to the organisms themselves, because of the low rank and lack of intelligence of these, it has seemed only natural to set them down as a manifestation of a superior force which organises and directs all natural phenomena. This argument, however, omits one side of the medal.

Any close investigation of organisation and life reveals that, beside many most perfect harmonies, there are facts which prove the existence of incomplete harmony or even absolute disharmony. The examination of the flowers of orchids would lead one to the belief that each part, even the smallest and apparently most insignificant, has its rôle in the mechanism for fertilisation and cross-fertilisation. In reality it is not so. There are in certain orchids organs which do not fulfil any function.

Even among the species of Catasetum, in which the pollinia are thrown with force on the bodies of insects, there are some female flowers in which the male organs are rudimentary and without utility. In these flowers, according to Darwin,^[36] “the two membranous sacks containing the rudimentary pollen-masses never open, but they easily separate from each other and from the anther. The tissue of which they are formed is thick and pulpy. Like most rudimentary parts, the pollen-masses vary much in size and form; they are only about one-tenth of the bulk of those of the male.” There are then, without doubt, some structures that are of no service.

The existence of these rudimentary pollinia, incapable of being transported or of fertilising the female element, is easily explained by the supposition that formerly the flowers of the Catasetum were true hermaphrodites, but that in the course of time the male organs have become incompletely atrophied in certain flowers, in which, on the other hand, the female part has increased. The occurrence of an actual degeneration is shown by the existence of rudiments of the pollinia too insignificant to accomplish their normal functions.

Rudimentary and useless organs are widely distributed, and we find them in many places. Familiar instances are the atrophied eyes of animals that live in the dark, and the sometimes rudimentary sexual organs of many plants and animals.

Not only are orchids and other flowers adapted to fertilisation by means of insects, but many insects display special adaptations to their habit of visiting flowers. Butterflies, bees, and many other insects, possess mouth organs modified for the purpose of penetrating flowers to secure nectar or pollen. Other insects, again, are not so fortunate in this respect. Darwin^[37] on one occasion “found an extremely minute Hymenopterous insect vainly struggling to escape, with its head cemented by the hardened viscid matter to the crest of the rostellum and to the tips of the pollinia (of an orchid, Listera ovata, Fig. 4). The insect was not so large as one of the pollinia, and after causing the explosion had not strength enough to remove them; it was punished for attempting a work beyond its strength, and perished miserably.”