One thing is very obvious here--and that is a flaw. State the case as a proposition thus--One or both of the two beetles is to the clock and its maker, as man is to the world and its Maker. A tremendous assumption--surely as sufficient to have startled Francis Bacon as the apparition of a new Idol. Is there any possible reason for elevating a death-watch--thinking in character as a death-watch--into a capable interpreter of clocks? Moreover, the ground principle of our human Teleology is that Man holds a lofty relation, not to the Universe only, but to its Maker likewise. He claims, in a word, the most sublime of all earthly kinships. The very fact that he can look with intelligent and admiring appreciation upon the works of God, justifies his belief that he has a real insight into their excellence, and is so far at least akin to the mind of God. If Mr. Huxley meant that a proportionate degree of insight into clock-making was possessed by his beetles, they would surely have been able to read the clock's dial-plate and understand the lesson conveyed by its pointers. The death-watch would at least say "_labuntur horæ_"--and comprehend that time was being registered--although he might even then fall far short of our human belief "_pereunt et imputantur_," and fail of knowing that time registers itself in a record of moral good and evil. The truth is that all mixing up manlike attributes with brute animality, and what seems ten times worse, with machines of wood and metal, can be nothing better than an attempt to produce a sound and prolific offspring from some ill-assorted and heterogeneous hybridism. We have adverted to this peculiarity of style before and venture upon doing so again, because all admirers of Mr. Huxley's great powers (and who can read his writings without such admiration?) may surely be justified in wishing that he would discard it at once and for ever. Its practical effect is apparently to assume the real point at issue and to cover up the tacit assumption. That he is really no chance offender in this respect may be gathered from a few instances noted at random. We have just had a couple of philosophic death-watches[84]--one a Teleologist, the other a Mechanicist--the lucubrations of both being neither exactly human, nor yet Coleopterous. We observed before a righteous clock[85]--regularly moral if regularly wound up. He has besides a machine, undescribed but endued with a gift of ratiocination[86]--and more curious still a piano[87] which listens when it is played upon, and though possessed of only one sense (hearing) succeeds in building up "endless ideas" of a certain cast and cogency. From this self-educated instrument much may of course be looked for, and accordingly we find "Its cogitative faculties immersed In cogibundity of cogitation,"