adapted to describe geometrical figures and solve mechanical problems of great perplexity.

The architectural or nest-building instincts of animals show the geometrical and mechanical knowledge of the Creator of animals in a very conspicuous manner. Men invented and used the arch long before human mathematicians solved its theory. Many other of our mechanical inventions, and some of them, as the barrel and the potter's wheel, for example, of a wonderful kind, have an antiquity that long antedates abstract mathematical thought. We, reasoning, discover the principles underlying our inventions, and thus improve science, which again suggests new inventions; so that human art and human science stimulate and foster each other to endless competition and endless progress. The lower races have, apparently, no abstract thoughts, no intuitions, that are brought, with consciousness, among the data of their reasoning; in other words, they appear to have no science, and hence their progress in the arts is so slow as to appear stationary. But their instinctive judgments appear, frequently, more accurate and wonderful than those of men. To see the republican swallow, coming through the air, fold her wings at precisely the right moment, and when at precisely the right speed, in order to enter softly and smoothly her earthen bottle, makes the art of the most skillful coxswain seem rude in comparison. The weaving of the bird's nest is in the case of the African grosbeak carried to a degree of perfection that vies with that of the nicest works of man, unaided by machinery. But the architectural work of insects is most wonderful, and none more so than the familiar honeycomb. Always admired by men, from the earliest ages, it was, at the beginning of the last century, discovered by Moraldi, of Nice, to embody distinctly the complicated geometrical conception, of forming cells to contain a fluid mass, with the greatest strength, the greatest economy of space, and the greatest economy of material. The paper-making wasps make rude approximations toward the solution of the same problem, but inasmuch as the larger part of their material is cheaply gathered from the surface of wood, there is no call for so strict an economy. The bee, needing a water-proof material, yet finding the resin of trees too adhesive to be worked with facility, confines her use of such resin to the places in which she needs

especial strength, or especial resistance to moisture; and, for her ordinary work of cell building, uses a material wholly secreted by the glands of her own body. Her cells are approximately hexagons, which hold more, and have shorter, and therefore stronger, sides than any other figures which could be packed without waste of room. They are set, with economy of room, base to base; and still further strengthened on the bases, by being set one against a part of three, so that the bottom of each cell is supported by three partition walls on the other side. Finally, and most curious, the bottom of each cell is depressed in the centre to about that degree which will save most by diminishing the height of these supporting partitions without increasing too much the area of the floor which rests upon them. I I say about that degree; and the accordance of the average cells, in a normal piece of comb, with theoretical perfection as determined by the calculus of Newton, is very close. We should not expect perfection, because the perfection of the artisan is to be measured, not by the perfection of his results, but by the perfection of their adaptation to his end. He were a poor farrier who polished his shoes with the care that a dentist bestows upon his gold filling. Nor would the bee be a wise economist if she wasted time in bringing to theoretical perfection her saving of wax. What the bee's conscious aim is, in the construction of the cell, we may or may not at some time discover. That she has conscious aims is evident, from her adaptation of the form of the comb to circumstances, and from her ingenious contrivances, not only to repair mischief, but to guard against threatened evil. But it is equally evident that in the formation of the bee, and in the inspiration of her instincts, a knowledge and wisdom presided, to which the whole question of maximum and minimum lay open countless ages before human thought grappled with its problems.

It only requires a more intimate acquaintance with the habits of any animal to discover the adaptation of its instincts to its organization. The apparent instances to the contrary arise from want of patience and thoughtfulness in the observer. I stood, one evening, at early dusk, watching the movements of a curious insect on the inside wall of an open shed. Its body, a little over an inch in length, and very thin, seemed, nevertheless, too heavy for its long and delicate legs, which swayed and trembled under the

weight, as it slowly stepped along, with long pauses between each step. It walked on four legs, holding the other two, which were shorter and stouter, extended in front. I presently perceived that it was making toward a fly which had settled, apparently to sleep, upon the board within three inches of my insect. I wished to see what its designs were upon the fly, but so slow were its motions, that I was obliged to wait fully twenty minutes before being gratified. As the insect approached the fly, he slowly extended a very long and exceedingly slender antenna, and touched the fly gently, in various parts, as if to ascertain more precisely its position. He then made a detour, and brought himself, at length, exactly in front of the sleeping victim, with his own head nearly over the fly's head, and began very slowly to raise his raptorious legs high above the fly. I was growing tired of his slow and awkward motions, when, in an instant, my feelings were changed to those of the highest admiration for his great engineering skill; the fly was aloft in air, with the beak of the insect thrust into its back calmly imbibing its juices; while the fly's feet could touch nothing, its wings were both dislocated, and firmly pinioned in the captor's raptorious legs; which, coming down suddenly between the wings, had parted them, dislocated them, and pinned them between the wrist-spurs of those legs and their sharp extremities; then, without an instant's pause, lifted the fly from his feet, and impaled him upon the ploiaria's beak.

THOMAS HILL.

THE SIMILARITIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

II.

GROUNDS AND METHODS, POSITIVE.

In the previous paper I endeavored to show that if the foundations of religion are insecure, those of science, also, for the same reasons and in the same way, are uncertain. Not only can this negative exposition be made, but positively it can be shown that religion has valid evidences similar to those of science. Physical investigation can claim no monopoly of scientific method; for, as Herbert Spencer says, it is nothing different from ordinary reasoning, but simply the processes of common sense carried out with precision. Let us consider, then, the

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION OF RELIGION.

The starting-point of all science is in the observation of nature. By the various senses, sight, hearing, smell, touch, various objects star, rock, water, plant, animal-are perceived; and their varied qualities, heat and cold, hardness, softness, perfumes, sounds, forms, &c., are noticed. These are compared; their likenesses and differences noted. Then classifications are formed, families, species, substances, forces, laws, and, as the result of these inductions, general propositions are laid down, the general principle ruling in this inductive process being to classify together the like things, separating them from the unlike, and to interpret the unknown by the known, not vice versa.

Now the course of religious thought has been the same. It may not have been aware that it started with observation, and proceeded by induction, any more than M. Jourdain knew that he talked prose. It may even have claimed to reach its knowledge entirely through other sources. Nevertheless, like science, its work has been, for the most part, the interpretation of the facts of nature, only it has taken them up with other aim, and pursued them in another direction. Mr. Huxley himself, urging upon clergymen

the study of science, points this out. The theories of religion, he says, "like all other theories, are professedly based upon matters of fact." (Lay Sermons, p. 61.)

If we examine even the rudest forms of religion, we shall find their genesis, as Mr. Tylor says (p. 387, Primitive Culture), in "the plain evidence of men's senses, as interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy." Mr. Tylor has explained, at length, the various processes and reasonings which suggest to the savage the doctrine of spiritual beings. To sum them up, they are as follows: Thinking men, at a low level of culture, observing the strange phenomena of sleep, trance, dreams, disease, death, are deeply impressed by them, and seek to account for them. What makes the difference between a live and a dead body, - a conscious and an unconscious man? What are these human shapes which appear in visions? Looking at these marvelous facts, the ancient savage philosophers made the induction of what we may call an apparitional soul, or ghost soul, an unsubstantial human image or shadow, the cause of life and thought, independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present, and able to leave the body and flash swiftly from place to place.

This conception of spiritual beings as the causes of life and motion once attained to, two great postulates of religion were natural inferences from it. As the soul or spiritual being was able to leave the body during life, and appeared in dreams after death, it was not involved in the destruction of the body at death, but continued to live on.

This was enough to establish for them the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Then, as they looked upon the mighty marvels of earth and sky, so full of awe to primitive man, the grand conception of Divine Beings was reached.

The blazing sun which warmed and lighted man; the cloud which swallowed up the sun in the midst of its career, and shot its lightning bolts upon the earth; the sea which now smiled so sweetly, and now raved along the shore with tossing wave; the bubbling fount, the fruitful earth, the wind, the mountain, here were powers which did not originate with man himself, over which he could exercise no control nor foresight, which were mightier far