

272 LIFE AND HABIT. 



without design on the part of the orchid, and a gradual 

 perception of the advantages it is able to take over the 

 bee, and a righteous determination to enjoy them, than 

 I can believe that a mousetrap or a steam-engine is the 

 result of the accumulation of blind minute fortuitous 

 variations in a creature called man, which creature has 

 never wanted either mouse-traps or steam-engines, but 

 has had a sort of promiscuous tendency to make them, and 

 was benefited by making them, so that those of the race 

 who had a tendency to make them survived and left 

 issue, which issue would thus naturally tend to make 

 more mousetraps and more steam-engines. 



Pursuing this idea still further, can we for a moment 

 believe that these additions to our limbs — for this is 

 what they are — have mainly come about through the 

 occasional birth of individuals, who, without design on 

 their own parts, nevertheless made them better or 

 worse, and who, accordingly, either survived and trans- 

 mitted their improvement, or perished, they and their 

 incapacity together ? 



When I can believe in this, then — and not till then — 

 can I believe in an origin of species which does not 

 \ resolve itself mainly into sense of need, faith, intelli- 

 \gence, and memory. Then, and not till then, can I 

 believe that such organs as the eye and ear can have 

 arisen in any other way than as the result of that kind 

 of mental ingenuity, and of moral as well as physical 

 capacity, without which, till then, I should have con- 

 sidered such an invention as the steam-engine to be 

 impossible. 



