NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 283 



once said what is. The what of the faculty of sight may 

 have been as small a germ as you please ; still so soon as 

 that, germ was, sight was ; and before that germ was, 

 sight simply was not. Almost it would seem with this 

 of gradation before us as though all difficulties would 

 become easy, if only (graded into disappearance) they 

 were thought far enough back as though Mr. Darwin 

 would really enable himself to see by shutting his eyes. 



That gradation indeed cannot create, we have only to 

 look around us. You shall make blue, by accumulation 

 of blue, as intense as you may ; but you will never make 

 it a red or a yellow. Even of any colour in the rain- 

 bow, it is in vain to seek to establish the origin of it by 

 any gradation from this side or from that. Oxygen, 

 hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, 

 potass, soda, lime, lead, copper, iron : gradation will 

 not do much to identify such differences as these. So 

 with animals. It is an enormous presumption to say : 

 They are just all of them protoplasm ; for let them be 

 protoplasm, it is certain that not one single particle of 

 protoplasm, whether of organ or organism, is interchange- 

 able with that of another. Reduce a pound of gold, 

 say, even to the hundredth of a grain, that hundredth of a 

 grain, in every one specific quality (as weight, colour, etc.), 

 will be still gold, exactly as the pound was. Gradation 

 that will be insensible in the most delicate scale, is 

 powerless to obliterate the constitutive properties. Even 

 the gradation of temperature that is all-powerful over 

 states ice, water, steam cannot put a tooth into the 

 substance (HO) itself. 



But the one word is enough : gradation cannot create. 

 We have only to put the whole animal organisation 

 generally, into the light of this remark to be enabled to 

 see the futility of claiming creation for a series of miscel- 

 laneous accidents. "The old argument from design 



