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also, that we are clearly of the same descent as birds, because of our 

 similitude to them in our imperfect condition before birth. Birds, I 

 admit, have not the same number of vertebrae that we have, but if 

 you think that I shall allow that this overturns my argument, you 

 are very much mistaken. You may call it a " meddle and muddle " 

 if you like. I do not. I have spoken. 



I believe that all organised beings have been produced by empirical 

 efforts at the cost of myriads of imperfect experiments, though " on 

 the theory of Creation " there is every appearance of One Mind, master 

 of the whole work, foreseeing the end from the beginning, holding all 

 forms of life in view, having them all, as it were, in its hand, and 

 all carried out on one plan. 



I believe that natural selection has made any animal perfect only 

 after " exterminating " enormous numbers of experimental ones ; 

 failures in faci, like Beau Brummell's neck-ties, so that the world has 

 been one vast shambles of incalculable slaughter for an inconceivable 

 period of time. It is true that the remains of not one individual of 

 all these failures has ever been found, but I have only to say that 

 they ought to be, for there must have been mountains upon mountains 

 of them, " Pelion upon Ossa" (ay, ossa, bones indeed), over and over 

 again, to build my theory on. 



I believe that ' ' natural selection results from the struggle for 

 existence," or in plainer English, is the Result of Destruction; yes, 

 every part of every animal, the wing of the bat, and the hand of the 

 ape, is so. The whole of Nature is one great battle-field, in which 

 every living creature, and every part of each, has only been produced 

 by the murder of its ancestors, time out of mind, and could only have 

 " survived " by the " extermination " of every competitor in hecatombs, 

 so that its own life is, after all, only a triumphant blunder. 



I believe that the bones in the arm of the monkey, the wing of 

 the bat, the fore leg of the horse, and the flipper of the seal, are not 

 of any " special use to those animals," but are only due to 

 " inheritance." You may call this solemn trifling, and may ask how 

 these animals would do without them ? That is their affair, not mine. 

 It follows, indeed, that a better architect would have given these 

 animals more useful limbs, and that the works of Nature might be 

 vastly improved upon in my opinion, though I see that, even as it 

 is, a horse can gallop a mile in a minute, a monkey can climb from 

 bough to bough in a most surprising manner, and a seal glide through 

 the water in a marvellous way, the similarity of its structure to tbat 

 of those others being no manner of hindrance to it. You may, indeed, 

 reply that if the bones of the fore arm of the ape were of no use to 

 the "ape they cannot be to us its descendants. You may call this 

 logic, but I have no place for such an argument in my book. 



I may " believe " that the ancestor of the seal had not a flipper, 

 but a foot with five toes; and I may "further venture to believe" 

 that the several bones in the limbs of the monkey, the horse, and the 

 bat, were of more use to their common ancestor than they are to 

 themselves. 



I believe, I cannot deny, that you would be justified in saying 

 that if the ancestor of the seal had five toes, it may have been either 

 a man or an ape, or more probably, perhaps, a bear, which, as I have 

 elsewhere stated, had a natural tendency to become " very like a whale." 

 All you see is fish that comes to my net, as I said before. 



I believe, yes I believe, that on my theory, among the " swarms " of 

 creatures "totally unlike any existing animal," it is highly probable 

 "that the ancestor of the seal with five toes "may" have played his pranks. 



