Secondly, the actual facts of its existence.
Thirdly, the physical causes of these facts, if we can discover them.
181. Now, it is customary, and may be generally advisable, to confine the term ‘natural history’ to the last two branches of knowledge only. I do not care what we call the first branch; but, in the accounts of animals that I prepare for my schools at Oxford, the main point with me will be the mythology of them; the second, their actual state and aspect, (second, this, because almost always hitherto only half known); and the anatomy and chemistry of their bodies, I shall very rarely, and partially, as I told you, examine at all: but I shall take the greatest pains to get at the creature’s habits of life; and know all its ingenuities, humours, delights, and intellectual powers. That is to say, what art it has, and what affection; and how these are prepared for in its external form.
182. I say, deliberately and energetically, ‘prepared for,’ in opposition to the idea, too prevalent in modern philosophy, of the form’s being fortuitously developed by repetition of impulse. It is of course true that the aspects and characters of stones, flowers, birds, beasts, and men, are inseparably connected with the conditions under which they are appointed to have existence; but the method of this connection is infinitely varied; so far from fortuitous, it appears grotesquely, often terrifically arbitrary; and neither stone, flower, beast, nor man can understand any single reason of the arbitrament, or comprehend why its Creator made it thus.
183. To take the simplest of instances,—which happens also to be one of the most important to you as artists,—it is appointed that vertebrated animals shall have no more than four legs, and that, if they require to fly, the two legs in front must become wings, it being against law that they should have more than these four members in ramification from the spine.
Can any law be conceived more arbitrary, or more apparently causeless? What strongly planted three-legged animals there might have been! what symmetrically radiant five-legged ones! what volatile six-winged ones! what circumspect seven-headed ones! Had Darwinism been true, we should long ago have split our heads in two with foolish thinking, or thrust out, from above our covetous hearts, a hundred desirous arms and clutching hands; and changed ourselves into Briarean Cephalopoda. But the law is around us, and within; unconquerable; granting, up to a certain limit, power over our bodies to circumstance and will; beyond that limit, inviolable, inscrutable, and, so far as we know, eternal.
184. For every lower animal, similar laws are established; under the grasp of these it is capable of change, in visibly permitted oscillation between certain points; beyond which, according to present experience, it cannot pass. The adaptation of the instruments it possesses in its members to the conditions of its life is always direct, and occasionally beautiful; but in the plurality of instances, partial, and involving painful supplementary effort. Some animals have to dig with their noses, some to build with their tails, some to spin with their stomachs: their dexterities are usually few—their awkwardnesses numberless;—a lion is continually puzzled how to hold a bone; and an eagle can scarcely pull the meat off one, without upsetting himself.
185. Respecting the origin of these variously awkward, imperfectly, or grotesquely developed phases of form and power, you need not at present inquire: in all probability the race of man is appointed to live in wonder, and in acknowledgment of ignorance; but if ever he is to know any of the secrets of his own or of brutal existence, it will assuredly be through discipline of virtue, not through inquisitiveness of science. I have just used the expression, “had Darwinism been true,” implying its fallacy more positively than is justifiable in the present state of our knowledge; but very positively I can say to you that I have never heard yet one logical argument in its favour, and I have heard, and read, many that were beneath contempt. For instance, by the time you have copied one or two of your exercises on the feather of the halcyon, you will be more interested in the construction and disposition of plume-filaments than heretofore; and you may, perhaps, refer, in hope of help, to Mr. Darwin’s account of the peacock’s feather. I went to it myself, hoping to learn some of the existing laws of life which regulate the local disposition of the colour. But none of these appear to be known; and I am informed only that peacocks have grown to be peacocks out of brown pheasants, because the young feminine brown pheasants like fine feathers. Whereupon I say to myself, “Then either there was a distinct species of brown pheasants originally born with a taste for fine feathers; and therefore with remarkable eyes in their heads,—which would be a much more wonderful distinction of species than being born with remarkable eyes in their tails,—or else all pheasants would have been peacocks by this time!” And I trouble myself no more about the Darwinian theory.
When you have drawn some of the actual patterns of plume and scale with attention, I believe you will see reason to think that spectra of organic species may be at least as distinct as those of metals or gases; but learn at all events what they are now, and never mind what they have been.
186. Nor need you care for methods of classification any more than for the origin of classes. Leave the physiologists to invent names, and dispute over them; your business is to know the creature, not the name of it momentarily fashionable in scientific circles. What practical service you can get from the order at present adopted, take, without contention; and as far as possible, use English words, or be sure you understand the Latin ones.