qr CRITICISMS ON “THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES” 85 
well enough to enable the organism to hold its 
own against such competitors as it has met with, 
but admits the possibility of indefinite improve- 
ment. But an example may bring into clearer 
light the profound opposition between the ordinary 
teleological, and the Darwinian, conception. 
Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very 
well. Teleology tells us that they do so because 
they were expressly constructed for so doing—that 
they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect 
and so delicately adjusted that no one of their or- 
gans could be altered, without the change involving 
the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms 
on the contrary, that there was no express con- 
struction concerned in the matter; but that among 
the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, 
many of which died out from want of power to 
resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were 
better fitted to catch mice than others, whence 
they throve and persisted, in proportion to the 
advantage over their fellows thus offered to them. 
Far from i imagining that cats exist.in order to 
2 
eatch mice well, "Darwiniam supposes that cats exist 
if the cat type has long persisted as we know it, 
the interpretation of the fact upon Darwinian 
principles would be, not that the cats have re- 
mained invariable, but that such varieties as have 
incessantly occurred have been, on the whole, less 
because they catch mice well—mousing being—not 
end, but the condition, of their existence. And 
a 
