Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as
perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be
withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes
the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?"
If the sneer here escapes ordinary vision in the detached extracts,
(one of them wanting the end of the sentence,) it is, if possible,
more imperceptible when read with the context. Moreover, this perusal
inclines us to think that the "Examiner" has misapprehended the
particular argument or object, as well as the spirit, of the author in
these passages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution against
the inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration
of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty
assumption is apt to involve,--considerations probably analogous to
those which induced Lord Bacon rather disrespectfully to style final
causes "sterile virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that
"sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section
from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary
question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, but, we
suppose, wholly unconscious of denying "any manifestation of design in
the material universe." He concludes the first sentence:--
----"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and
might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I
have no doubt that the color is due to some quite distinct cause,
probably to sexual selection.
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