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Cornugaya Directory 03
Frogs and other amphibians stand higher in the scale of life than
fish; they have acquired legs in place of fins, and lungs instead of
gills; they can hop about on shore with perfect freedom. Now, frogs
still produce a great deal of spawn, as every one knows: but the eggs
in each brood are numbered in their case by hundreds, or at most by a
thousand or two, not by millions as with many fishes. The spawn
hatches out as a rule in ponds, and we have all seen the little black
tadpoles crowding the edges of the water in such innumerable masses
that one would suppose the frogs to be developed from them must cover
the length and breadth of England. Yet what becomes of them all?
Hundreds are destroyed in the early tadpole stage--eaten up or
starved, or crowded out for want of air and space and water: a few
alone survive or develop four legs, and absorb their tails and hop on
shore as tiny froglings. Even then the massacre of the innocents
continues. Only a tithe of those which succeeded in quitting their
native pond ever return to it full grown, to spawn in due time, and
become the parents of further generations.
And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall have
disappointed you. But for the great attention which is being paid
to the work from which I have quoted above, I should not have
thought it well to insist on points with which you are, I doubt not,
as fully impressed as I am: but that book weakens the sanctions of
natural religion, and minimises the comfort which it affords us,
while it does more to undermine than to support the foundations of
what is commonly called belief. Therefore I was glad to embrace
this opportunity of protesting. Otherwise I should not have been so
serious on a matter that transcends all seriousness. Lord
Beaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect. When asked to give a
rule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not let him try
and find out who wrote the letters of Junius." Pressed for further
counsel he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--and he
would say no more. Don't bore people. And yet I am by no means
sure that a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unless
he who addresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially if
they have paid any money for hearing him. My great namesake said,
"Surely the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," and
great as the pleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, I
believe he was right. So I remember a poem which came out some
thirty years ago in Punch, about a young lady who went forth in
quest to "Some burden make or burden bear, but which she did not
greatly care, oh Miserie." So, again, all the holy men and women
who in the Middle Ages professed to have discovered how to make the
best of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should have
a large place in their programme. Still there are limits, and I
close not without fear that I may have exceeded them.
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