112 Variations not Indefinite. 



sensitivity at some spot of the skin of our sight 

 less ancestor might have developed into any 

 thing else than an eye ; and it is solely owing to 

 the fact that other combinations, innumerable 

 and heterogeneous, could not hit upon a stable 

 equilibrium in relation to the environment that 

 an eye happened to be set up at all. In this 

 view, natural selection is only a learned name for 

 chance. And so interpreting it, Lange, as we have 

 seen, ridicules teleology, and the design-argument 

 of Paley is declared by Huxley forever obsolete. 



But we now know there is no scientific warrant 

 for this philosophy of chance. Ko organism 

 varies indefinitely. &quot; A whale,&quot; says Professor 

 Huxley, &quot; does not tend to vary in the direction 

 of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction 

 of producing whalebone.&quot; And, as we have al 

 ready seen, other authorities join in the denial 

 that variations are every-sided and indifferent. 

 Further, the same scientists assure us that the 

 &quot; importance of natural selection will not be im 

 paired &quot; by this view of variations. But if so, 

 natural selection is manifestly not wedded to 

 chance, and not incompatible with design. Kay, 

 it seems to presuppose design; since develop 

 ment takes place along certain predetermined 

 lines of modification, and natural selection only 



