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The Young Queens of what our intellect urges. And this intellect of ours, that, as a rule, its own boundary reached, knows not whither to go—can it be well that it should join itself to these forces, and add to them its unexpected weight?

Have we the right to conclude, from the dangers of parthenogenesis, that nature is not always able to proportion the means to the end; and that what she intends to preserve is preserved at times by means of precautions she has to contrive against her own precautions, and often through foreign circumstances she has not herself foreseen? But is there anything she does foresee, anything she does intend to preserve? Nature, some may say, is a word wherewith we clothe the unknowable; and few things authorise our crediting it with intelligence, or with aim. That is true. 281