The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 109 



light, changing the focus, and correcting spheri 

 cal and chromatic aberration. If the eye varies, 

 what are all these different gradations but so many 

 stages in the history of its variability forms 

 that have been preserved by natural selection \ 

 &quot; The difficulty of believing that a perfect and 

 complex eye could be formed by natural selec 

 tion, though insuperable by our imagination, 

 should not be considered as subversive of the 

 theory,&quot; nor will it so be considered by any sci 

 entist who feels it &quot; indispensable that the reason 

 should conquer the imagination.&quot; 



But if reason is to &quot; conquer the imagination,&quot; 

 it can only be by clearly apprehending the facts 

 which imagination distorts. And when the im 

 agery of the preceding description is translated 

 into reality, the account of the formation of the 

 eye looks reasonable enough, though of course it 

 is not proof against an irrational interpretation. 

 What perplexes us at first is the creative func 

 tion assigned to natural selection. The eye is 

 &quot;formed by natural selection.&quot; And repeatedly 

 in the same chapter natural selection is said to 

 &quot;produce structures.&quot; Now, we have not hither 

 to thought of natural selection as an originative 

 power, and we are not prepared to admit that it 

 could have formed the eye. And, indeed, it is 



