i84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



liand, we may rightly compare the eye "to a telescope, perfected by the 

 long continued efforts of the highest human intellects/' we could carry 

 out the analogy, and draw satisfactory illustrations and inferences 

 from it. The essential, the directly intellectual thing is the making of 

 the improvements in the telescope or the steam-engine. Whether the 

 successive improvements, being small at each step, and consistent with 

 the general type of the instrument, are applied to some of the in- 

 dividual machines, or entire new machines are constructed for each, is 

 a minor matter. Though if machines could engender, the adaptive 

 method would be most economical; and economy is said to be a para- 

 mount law in nature. The origination of the improvements, and the 

 successive adaptations to meet new conditions or subserve other ends, 

 are what answer to the supernatural, and therefore remain inexplicable. 

 As to bringing them into use, though wisdom foresees the result, the 

 circumstances and the natural competition will take care of that, in 

 the long run. The old ones will go out of use fast enough, except 

 where an old and simple machine remains still best adapted to a par- 

 ticular purpose or condition, — as, for instance, the old Newcomen engine 

 for pumping out coal-pits. If there's a Divinity that shapes these 

 ends, the whole is intelligible and reasonable; otherwise, not. 



We regret that the necessity of discussing philosophical questions 

 has prevented a fuller examination of the theory itself, and of the in- 

 teresting scientific points which are brought to bear in its favor. One 

 of its neatest points, certainly a very strong one for the local origina- 

 tion of species, and their gradual diffusion under natural agencies, we 

 must reserve for some other convenient opportunity. 



The work is a scientific one, rigidly restricted to its direct object; 

 and by its science it must stand or fall. Its aim is, probably not to 

 deny creative intervention in nature, — for the admission of the inde- 

 pendent origination of certain types does away with all antecedent im- 

 probability of as much intervention as may be required, — but to main- 

 tain that Natural Selection in explaining the facts, explains also 

 many classes of facts which thousand-fold repeated independent acts of 

 creation do not explain, but leave more mysterious than ever. How far 

 the author has succeeded, the scientific world will in due time be able to 

 pronounce. 



