262 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xin. 



the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had 

 received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin s hands. For the teleo- 

 logical argument runs thus : an organ or organism (A) is precisely 

 fitted to perform a function or purpose (B) ; therefore it was 

 specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley s 

 famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch 

 to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be 

 evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end ; 

 on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to 

 produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, 

 is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to 

 that end. 



Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that 

 the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that 

 it was the result of the modification of another watch which 

 kept time but poorly ; and that this again had proceeded from 

 a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all seeing 

 that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimen 

 tary ; and that going back and back in time we came at last to 

 a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole 

 fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all 

 these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure 

 to vary indefinitely ; and secondly, from something in the 

 surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction 

 of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other 

 directions ; then it is obvious that the force of Paley s argument 

 would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an appa 

 ratus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might 

 be the result of a method of trial and error worked by 

 unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the 

 means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent. 



Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustra 

 tion s sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what 

 the establishment of Darwin s Theory will do for the organic 

 world. For the notion that every organism has been created 

 as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substi- 



