GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT. 



355 



suggestion, perhaps, of some fool or savage, and alto- 

 gether unworthy of the attention of "philosophic minds. 

 He would declare it to be quite unsuited to illustrate 

 the grand truths of natural selection which, he would 

 remark, had been already more than sufficiently proved and 

 acknowledged by everyone whose opinion was of any im- 

 portance ; and, with prophetic spirit, he might add that, 

 although no one had attempted to explain either heredity 

 or adaptivity by physics, it was, nevertheless, perfectly 

 certain that evolution which comprises these two faculties 

 would be fully accounted for by physical causation only. It 

 is said that every scientific man of any reputation has already 

 accepted this as a self-evident fact It is curious how 

 very ingeniously some authorities contrive to overcome the 

 many difficulties which they perceive will certainly present 

 themselves to a reader's mind, and excite therein doubts 

 concerning the absolute truth of evolution. The far-seeing 

 Strauss, for example, remarks that the eye of the embryo is 

 " formed in the womb of the being, whose eye has been, 

 during the whole course of its existence, subject to the 

 influence of light, and which transmits the modifications 

 effected in the eye by light to its offspring ;"* but he gives no 

 facts to prove this astounding conclusion. No doubt he 

 considers that these will be arrived at by the professors of 

 the science about to be. The seeing human individual, he 

 says, does not form " its own or its offspring's eye by acting 

 in concert with light," but it by no means follows, he 

 observes, that this eye " must therefore have been made by 

 an artificer external to itself !" The individual, we are in- 



* "The Old Faith and the New, a Confession." Translated by 

 Mathilda Blind. Page 250. 



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