DARWIN AND DARWINISM 77 



the unfit. But it could cast no ray of light upon 

 the only vital problem in question: the origin 

 of specifically new qualities not possessed before. 

 Thus no process of elimination can account for 

 the formation of a new organ, much less, accord- 

 ing to the theory of ultra-Darwinists, for the 

 appearance of so wonderful an apparatus as the 

 human eye or ear, or the marvelous and inexplica- 

 ble power of reproduction, where it is presumed 

 that these faculties had not existed before. Dar- 

 win himself denied that natural selection could be 

 the cause of variations. It can therefore be at 

 most a very secondary factor, accounting to a 

 certain degree for the further accidental perfec- 

 tion of organs, already existing within a given 

 species, but cannot possibly explain the origin 

 of the species itself. 



To Darwin's credit it must here be said that 

 he refused to go the length of his militantly ma- 

 terialistic followers, and even freely confessed 

 in his "Descent of Man" the need of accepting 

 a preordination according to a previous design. 

 Logically this could mean nothing less than the 

 acceptance of a Creator, as Lyell pointed out 

 to him on March n, 1863: "I think the old 

 'Creation' is almost as much required as ever." 



Although in a familiar passage we find Dar- 

 win, by a strange confusion of mind, rejecting 

 the "argument from design," * yet in the book 



4 Vol. I, page 309. 



