84 DARWINIANA. 



in the telescope, with design, through painful guessing, 

 reasoning, experimenting, and forming. 



Suppose our skeptic to believe in all this power of 

 natural selection ; will he now seal up his verdict for 

 design, with the same confidence that he would be- 

 fore he heard of Darwin ? If not, then " the supposed 

 proof from design is invalidated by Darwin's theory." 



A. G. Waiving incidental points and looking only 

 to the gist of the question, I remark that the argu- 

 ment for design as against chance, in the formation of 

 the eye, is most convincingly stated in your argument. 

 Upon this and upon numerous similar arguments the 

 whole question we are discussing turns. So, if the 

 skeptic was about to seal his verdict in favor of design,, 

 and a designer, when Darwin's book appeared, why 

 should his verdict now be changed or withheld ? All 

 the facts, about the eye, which convinced him that the 

 organ was designed, remain just as they were. His 

 conviction was not produced through testimony or eye- 

 witness, but design was irresistibly inferred from the 

 evidence of contrivance in the eye itself. 



Now, if the eye as it is, or has become, so convin- 

 cingly argued design, why not each particular step or 

 part of this result ? If the production of a perfect 

 crystalline lens in the eye you know not how as 

 much indicated design as did the production of a Dol- 

 lond achromatic lens you understand how then why 

 does not " the swelling out " of a particular portion of 

 the membrane behind the iris caused you know not 

 how which, by " correcting the errors of dispersion 

 and making the image somewhat more colorless," 



