Nothing could be
well conceived more foreign to experience and common sense. Animals and
plants have travelled to their present forms as a man has travelled to
any one of his own most complicated inventions. Slowly, step by step,
through many blunders and mischances which have worked together for good
to those that have persevered in elasticity. They have travelled as man
has travelled, with but little perception of a want till there was also
some perception of a power, and with but little perception of a power
till there was a dim sense of want; want stimulating power, and power
stimulating want; and both so based upon each other that no one can say
which is the true foundation, but rather that they must be both baseless
and, as it were, meteoric in mid air. They have seen very little ahead
of a present power or need, and have been then most moral, when most
inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when most obstinately
declining to pierce too far, and busy mainly with the present. They have
been so far blindfolded that they could see but for a few steps in front
of them, yet so far free to see that those steps were taken with aim and
definitely, and not in the dark.
"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
moins il a fait, moins il a su." This holds good wherever life holds
good.
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