TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 55 



Nor do we find that an engine made after any old 

 and well-known pattern is now made with much more 

 consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's 

 nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts 

 of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were 

 like screws and nuts, which are turned out by machinery 

 and in respect of which the labour of design is now no 

 more felt than is the design of him who first invented 

 the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any 

 modification in the article to be manufactured that 

 thought and design will come into play again ; but I 

 take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a 

 bird either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, 

 or to make some trifling deviation from its ordinary 

 practice, it will in nine cases out of ten make such 

 deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter 

 over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and 

 such a course, that is to say, that it had reasoned and 

 had acted with such purpose as its reason had dictated. 



And I imagine that this is the utmost that anyone 

 can claim even for man's own boasted powers. Set the 

 man who has been accustomed to make engines of one 

 type, to make engines of another type without any 

 intermediate course of training or instruction, and he 

 will make no better figure with his engines than a 

 thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make 

 a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend 

 that the ease and certainty with which an action is 

 performed, even though it may have now become 

 matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly 

 and seriously modified without rendering the whole 



