xiii.] CRITICISMS ON &quot;THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.&quot; 263 



lutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed 

 a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly ; of 

 these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions 

 which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and 

 become extinguished. 



According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet 

 fired straight at a mark ; according to Darwin, organisms are 

 like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest 

 fall wide. 



For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made 

 for the conditions in which it is found ; for the Darwinian 

 an organism exists because, out of many of its kind, it is the 

 only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in 

 which it is found. 



Teleology implies that the organs of every organism are 

 perfect and cannot be improved ; the Darwinian theory simply 

 affirms that they work well enough to enable the organism to 

 hold its own against such competitors as it has met with, but 

 admits the possibility of indefinite improvement. But an 

 example may bring into clearer light the profound opposi 

 tion between the ordinary teleological, and the Darwinian, 

 conception. 



Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology 

 tells us that they do so because they were expressly constructed 

 for so doing that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so 

 perfect and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs 

 could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of 

 all the rest. Darwinism affirms, on the contrary, that there was 

 no express construction concerned in the matter ; but that among 

 the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which 

 died out from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, 

 the cats, were better fitted to catch mice than others, whence 

 they throve and persisted, in proportion to the advantage over 

 their fellows thus offered to them. 



Far from imagining that cats exist in order to catch mice well, 

 Darwinism supposes that cats exist because they catch mice well 



