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I believe, to proceed, "I see no very great difficulty in believing" 

 that " natural selection " has worked out an eye of some 24,000 lenses, as 

 in an insect, from my supposed original " optic nerve, merely coated with 

 pigment." Aladdin's Lamp was nothing to my natural selection ! 



I believe that only let this "process go on for millions on millions of 

 years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds, and 

 may we not suppose that a living optical instrument might thus be formed, 

 as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of 

 man." You say its all " suppose and suppose," as the old Scotch ballad 

 says. Well, suppose it is what then? 



I believe that " thick layers of tissue " were manipulated, in some way 

 or other, to produce that result ; but as I was not there to see the process 

 going on, it is very unreasonable of you to expect me to tell you all or any- 

 thing about it. 



I believe that it all came of a "nerve sensitive to light ;" but how there 

 came to be such a nerve is a question you need not ask me. Whatever 

 was, was. That is a self-evident proposition, and proves my case. 



I believe that there was no design to produce such an eye, but only 

 that there happened to be a " nerve sensitive to light " just where it ought 

 to be in the head, and at the same time " spaces filled with fluid," all to 

 hand in fact, " this, that, and the other," and a "power intently watching 

 the process," natural selection to wit but all accidental, nothing of purpose. 

 You may say that you have a right to be indignant at such an insult 

 offered to your common sense. You may be ; but I have nothing to do 

 with common sense. 



I believe that natural selection was thus " intently watching each 

 accidental alteration," but without any prescribed plan of her own. It 

 was altogether a fortuitous proceeding. Thus, you see, the eye was the 

 result of a series of accidents, going on in millions upon millions of billions 

 upon billions of years, and at a sacrifice of a still greater number of lives 

 in failures. This is a philosophical argument ; and as it is quite sufficient 

 for me, let it suffice for you also. In a word, only take for granted all rny 

 " vain imaginations," and " we may believe that a living optical instrument 

 was thus formed, as superior (as I said) to one of glass as the works of 

 the Creator are to those of man." By " Creator, "you will of course under- 

 stand that I mean a Creator of my own creating that is to say, in other 

 words, " natural selection." 



I believe, you see, that in order to make a perfect animal or creature 

 of any kind, it is not necessary at all to know how to make it. Not 

 in the least certainly not. The only three postulates that I claim are, 

 Accident, Ignorance, and Extermination. By these three acting together, 

 all that is called Creation came into being as we see it. 



I believe, for I cannot deny, that one of the Trilobite family, the 

 Asaphus Tyrannus, has no fewer than 6,000 facets to each of its eyes, and 

 Buckland states that it was " created in the fulness of perfection," or to 

 use my own words, " as perfect as possessed by any of the articulate class." 

 I have, no doubt, contended that it takes millions upon millions of ages, 

 each million with millions upon millions of failures, to make anything like 

 an eye at all ; yet, as here we find a perfect eye in the Trilobite, whose 

 fossil remains are found in the most ancient of all the formations, and 

 which, therefore, in the words of Ansted, must have been among " the 

 earliest of created beings," this fact, I say, staring me in the face, I 

 "see no difficulty" whatever in it, by simply "imagining" that it must 

 have been gradually coming to that state of perfection in billions upon 

 billions of ages before the beginning. You understand, do you not ? 

 Nothing can be more plain or simple. It merely is an instance of the 

 " use of the imagination in science," Tyndall's grand discovery of which 



