THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 57 



not informed us Paley in his celebrated analogy with 

 the watch, insists that if the timepiece were so con- 

 structed as to produce other similar watches, after a 

 manner of generation in animals, the argument from 

 design would be all the stronger. What is to hinder 

 Mr. Darwin from giving Paley's argument a further 

 a-fortiori extension to the supposed case of a watch 

 which sometimes produces better watches, and contriv- 

 ances adapted to successive conditions, and so at length 

 turns out a chronometer, a town clock, or a series of 

 organisms of the same type ? From certain incidental 

 expressions at the close of the volume, taken in con- 

 nection with the motto adopted from Whewell, we 

 judge it probable that our author regards the whole 

 system of Nature as one which had received at its first 

 formation the impress of the will of its Author, fore- 

 seeing the varied yet necessary laws of its action 

 throughout the whole of its existence, ordaining when 

 and how each particular of the stupendous plan should 

 be realized in effect, and — with Him to whom to will 

 is to do — in ordaining doing it. "Whether profoundly 

 philosophical or not, a view maintained by eminent 

 philosophical physicists and theologians, such as Bab- 

 bage on the one hand and Jowett on the other, will 

 hardly be denounced as atheism. Perhaps Mr. Dar- 

 win would prefer to express his idea in a more general 

 way, by adopting the thoughtful words of one of the 

 most eminent naturalists of this or any age, substitut- 

 ing the word action for "thought," since it is the 

 former (from which alone the latter can be inferred) 

 that he has been considering. " Taking Nature as ex- 

 hibiting thought for my guide, it appears to me that 



