Scientific Sophisms. 271 



itself into an eye. Let it be granted : " in the 

 highest degree absurd " though it be. But the 

 primary postulate how does Mr. Darwin get 

 that ? " How a nerve comes to be sensitive to 

 light," he says, " hardly concerns us more than 

 how life itself originated." Perhaps not : but 

 both questions are studiously evaded when we 

 are left to infer that the nerve made itself 

 and that life caused itself to live ; or, in 

 other words, that both are examples of what 

 Mr. Darwin strangely calls "variation causing 

 alterations? 



Take now the several steps of the process as 

 pursued by Natural Selection according to Mr. 

 Darwin ; and let but the power competent to 

 do the things which he assumes are done, be 

 credited with sense enough to be aware of its 

 competence, and it may then be regarded as not 

 unlikely to have done some of them on purpose. 

 Whereupon the genesis of the eye ceases to be 

 a mystery. " All the appearances of contrivance 

 that have resulted from the operation find their 

 obvious and complete explanation in the as- 

 sumption of a contriver, and all such hazy films 

 as that of variability producing variation cease 

 to be capable of serving as excuses for wilful 

 blindness. And why should not the power in 

 question be so credited ? Here is Mr. Darwin's 



