The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 1 1 1 



highest forms of organism and of organ were 

 already contemplated and prefigured in their 

 lower antecedents, and the gap between the two 

 filled up by progressive modifications that strive 

 restlessly toward their predetermined goal ? And 

 in Darwin s account of the formation of the eye, 

 when metaphor has been translated into fact, I 

 can find warrant for nothing more than this: 

 That the eyes of animals have been improved 

 through beneficial modifications, originating we 

 know not how or whence, and that, in the strug 

 gle for life, the least advantageous eyes have been 

 eliminated. Natural selection explains how any 

 particular eye came to be perpetuated, once it had 

 arrived upon the scene, but it is dumb regarding 

 the formation of that or any other eye. , 



Although Darwin s account of the evolution of 

 the eye contains nothing more than I have stated, 

 there was, I think, in Darwin s mind an arriere- 

 pensee due to speculative preconceptions. In 

 accordance with the philosophy of fortuity, he 

 seemed to regard the variations between which 

 natural selection had to decide as altogether in 

 definite in their character, running out in every 

 direction, and as little adapted, for example, to 

 the formation of an eye as to the formation of a 

 stone. The infinite modifications of that tingling 



