Natural Selection. 127 



gly or in a long series, seem now essential to the very 

 existence of the species ? 



Another question also arises ; how were the 

 changes which have resulted in these complex adap- 

 tations inaugurated ? If we refer all these results 

 to accidental changes accumulating in the right di- 

 rection, we confess it would be as easy for us to be- 

 lieve that the words of a book might be formed in 

 order by a series of accidental positions of type 

 thrown from a box. If we refer any of these nice 

 adjustments to the comprehension and contrivance 

 of animals in the first instance, then we are called 

 upon to recognize in the ancestors of the present 

 races a power of comprehension which these races 

 do not now possess — a comprehension equalling 

 that power in the best of the human species ; for 

 no man can claim that he could better adjust these 

 activities of the animal with the forces of the inor- 

 ganic world, than they are now adjusted. And 

 these adjustments were complete as they now are 

 before men could understand the work even. 



And it must constantly be borne in mind that 

 to explain these results through the agency of Nat- 

 ural Selection, we must see how it could secure not 

 only all the difference of Instinct that there is in the 

 world, by the accumulation of changes all working 

 out a specific result, and the difference of form and 

 internal structure by like accumulated changes; 

 but we must see how it can secure all of these at 

 the same time, so as to produce the specific forms 

 in their wonderful variety and the specific instincts 

 in their complexity, and yet bring structure, func- 



