time to time. I find I need conversation, even opposition, to try out, to clarify my ideas.’
‘I should be honoured, whilst I am here.’
‘You will be eager to be off again, I know. To return to your travelling. I hope to be of very material assistance to that end, in due course. It is our duty either to seek out Nature’s secret places and ways, or to support and encourage those who are able to do so.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, Darwin, in his passage on the
eye
, does seem, does he not, to allow the possibility of a Creator? He compares the perfecting of the eye to the perfecting of a telescope, and talks about the changes over the millennia to a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and he goes on to remark that
if
we compare the forces that form the eye to the human intellect
“we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers.”
Mr Darwin invites us to suppose that this intently watching power is inconceivable—that the force employed is blind necessity, the law of
matter
. But I say that in matter itself is contained a great
mystery
—how did it come to be at all—how does organisation take place—may we not after all come face to face in considering these things with the Ancient of Days, with Him who asked Job, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast any knowledge.When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Darwin himself writes that his transparent layers form “a living optical instrument as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man.” ’
‘So he does. And it is easier for us to imagine the patient attention of an infinite watcher than to comprehend blind chance. It is easier to figure to ourselves shifts and fluctuations in transparent jelly with the image of the floating grains from the world of sand in the sermon—one may
almost
come at the imagination of blind chance in that way—grain by random grain—infinitesimal yet cumulative …’
Matty Crompton reminded William of the promise she had extracted about the glass hive and the formicary. The glass hive was constructed under William’s direction, the width of the comb of honey, with an entrance hole for the bees cut in the nursery window, and black cloth curtains placed over its walls. The bees were procured from a tenant farmer and inserted, buzzing darkly, into their new home. For the ants, a large glass tank was carried from the nearest town, and set up on its own table on a green baize cloth. Matty Crompton said that she herself would accompany William in search of the ants themselves. She had observed trails of several sorts of ants in the elm coppice last Summer. They set out together with two buckets, various jars, boxes and test-tubes, a narrow trowel and several pairs of tweezers. She had a quick step, and was not given to conversation. She led William straight to what he immediately saw to be a very large Wood Ants’ nest, the work of generation upon generation, backed up against an elm-stump, and thatched with a high dome of twigs, stalks and dry leaves. Little ragged chains of ants could be observed entering and leaving.
‘I have attempted to keep these insects myself,’ said Matty Crompton, ‘but I have a deathly touch, it appears. No matter howbeautiful a house I build, or how many flowers and fruits I offer, the creatures simply curl up and die.’
‘You probably had not captured a Queen. Ants are social beings: they exist, it appears, only for the good of the whole nest, and the centre of the nest is the Queen ant whose laying and feeding the others all tend ceaselessly. They will kill her and drag her away, it is true, if she ceases to produce young—or abandon her, when she will rapidly starve, for she is unable to fend for herself. But they exist to lavish attention on her when she is in
‘I should be honoured, whilst I am here.’
‘You will be eager to be off again, I know. To return to your travelling. I hope to be of very material assistance to that end, in due course. It is our duty either to seek out Nature’s secret places and ways, or to support and encourage those who are able to do so.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, Darwin, in his passage on the
eye
, does seem, does he not, to allow the possibility of a Creator? He compares the perfecting of the eye to the perfecting of a telescope, and talks about the changes over the millennia to a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and he goes on to remark that
if
we compare the forces that form the eye to the human intellect
“we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers.”
Mr Darwin invites us to suppose that this intently watching power is inconceivable—that the force employed is blind necessity, the law of
matter
. But I say that in matter itself is contained a great
mystery
—how did it come to be at all—how does organisation take place—may we not after all come face to face in considering these things with the Ancient of Days, with Him who asked Job, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast any knowledge.When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Darwin himself writes that his transparent layers form “a living optical instrument as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man.” ’
‘So he does. And it is easier for us to imagine the patient attention of an infinite watcher than to comprehend blind chance. It is easier to figure to ourselves shifts and fluctuations in transparent jelly with the image of the floating grains from the world of sand in the sermon—one may
almost
come at the imagination of blind chance in that way—grain by random grain—infinitesimal yet cumulative …’
Matty Crompton reminded William of the promise she had extracted about the glass hive and the formicary. The glass hive was constructed under William’s direction, the width of the comb of honey, with an entrance hole for the bees cut in the nursery window, and black cloth curtains placed over its walls. The bees were procured from a tenant farmer and inserted, buzzing darkly, into their new home. For the ants, a large glass tank was carried from the nearest town, and set up on its own table on a green baize cloth. Matty Crompton said that she herself would accompany William in search of the ants themselves. She had observed trails of several sorts of ants in the elm coppice last Summer. They set out together with two buckets, various jars, boxes and test-tubes, a narrow trowel and several pairs of tweezers. She had a quick step, and was not given to conversation. She led William straight to what he immediately saw to be a very large Wood Ants’ nest, the work of generation upon generation, backed up against an elm-stump, and thatched with a high dome of twigs, stalks and dry leaves. Little ragged chains of ants could be observed entering and leaving.
‘I have attempted to keep these insects myself,’ said Matty Crompton, ‘but I have a deathly touch, it appears. No matter howbeautiful a house I build, or how many flowers and fruits I offer, the creatures simply curl up and die.’
‘You probably had not captured a Queen. Ants are social beings: they exist, it appears, only for the good of the whole nest, and the centre of the nest is the Queen ant whose laying and feeding the others all tend ceaselessly. They will kill her and drag her away, it is true, if she ceases to produce young—or abandon her, when she will rapidly starve, for she is unable to fend for herself. But they exist to lavish attention on her when she is in
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