282 DARWINIANISM. 



disciple. This is the French which he objects to Spinoza : 

 " Or c'est pourtant la derniere des absurdities de croire 

 et de dire, que 1'ceil n'a pas e"te fait pour voir, ni 

 1'oreille pour entendre." Of course there is always the 

 possibility of a little fencing on the part of said dis- 

 ciples Darwins oder Hdckels, who may say, No one has 

 ever denied seeing to the eye, or hearing to the ear. 

 Diderot has still hit in the blank for all that : and for 

 this reason. It does not matter one jot, or one tittle, 

 that you should think, or that you should speak of the 

 " fine known gradations." There may be more and more 

 light ; but there is no gradation to it itself. It is, only 

 when it is. Let there be the dark only, and there never 

 will be light. 1 It is itself itself alone and nothing 

 else. And so it is with sight. All the gradations in 

 the universe never move a step to it. There may be 

 gradations in it, but there are no gradations to it. It 

 is sui generis. It alone is itself. The whole is there 

 in the instant that the first germ is there but only 

 then, and never, in a dot, a mote, a speck, till then. 

 The entire problem of light is implied in its very 

 earliest dawn ; and so equally the problem of sight. 

 Strange that Mr. Darwin should find in gradation that 

 power of creation which he would seem to deny every- 

 where else ; for, as we see, for the first of sight, as for the 

 first of light, there can only be, in either case, simply itself. 

 But as variation is a process, and no less selection a 

 process, each implying a material, a subject of the same ; 

 so gradation itself, by the very term of it, does not 

 create that which it is only concerned to grade. Grada- 

 tion must have a what if it (gradation) is even to be ; 

 and gradation as gradation has no power to create this, 

 that, or any what, let it act on such what as it may, 



1 "As well specify the time required for something to come out of 

 nothing." Schelling, xi. 238. 



