Besides those whose religion led them to despise the human body, there have been many savage races and tribes who have practised mutilations of the body. It would be a long list were I to set out all the modes in which the human body has been disfigured. Treatises on Ethnography and the volumes of travellers contain a multitude of details of this sort. The hair, the teeth and the lips have been subjected to treatment with the object of making them as unlike the natural condition as is possible. Many of the lower races discolour their teeth, or remove some of them, or file them to points. Others insert in the lips pieces of wood, of stone, or of bone. A whole chapter might be occupied with an account of the disfiguring devices of tattooers. The skull, the breasts, and the feet, have all been subjected to deforming treatment. Although there is not enough evidence to set down these practices to the existence of definite and self-conscious religious or philosophic doctrine, it is at least certain that the people among whom they occur are far from revering human nature in the fashion of the Greeks, but rather attempt to distort it in accordance with their own taste. Discontent with the natural conditions of existence is, as we have seen, so widespread that there is good reason for an inquiry as to the existence of some general principle underlying this diversity of opinion regarding human nature. I have already shown that this question of human nature has for long interested mankind, and has shared largely in the formation of ideas of the good and the beautiful. It is not too soon to submit the problem to rational investigation, using those rigid methods of science which have been learned in our epoch. I shall try to give an exposition of human nature in its strength and in its weakness. But before passing to man, I shall survey the lower forms of life, hoping to fix some landmarks that will be useful in the study of the larger problem. CHAPTER II HARMONIES AND DISHARMONIES AMONGST BEINGS INFERIOR TO MAN The organised world before the appearance of man on the earth—Absence of a law of universal progress—Fertilisation of vanilla—The part played by insects in the fertilisation of orchids—Mechanism by which insects carry the pollen of orchids—Habits of fossorial wasps—Harmonies in nature—Useless organs—Rudiments of the pollinia of orchids—Disharmonies in nature—Unadapted insects—Aberration of instincts—Perversion of sexual instinct—Attraction of insects by light—Luminous insects—Law of natural selection—Happiness and unhappiness in the organised world Long before man appeared on the earth animals and plants were distributed over it. Some of these were endowed with but vague senses, while others had well-developed instincts, and some even a certain degree of intelligence which they applied for their self-preservation and for the propagation of their own kind.