GREAT QUESTIONS IN LITTLE 



natural selection favor it or originate it before it 

 began to function? Can we conceive of a blind 

 tendency to variation as hitting upon such an or- 

 gan as the eye, or the ear, or any other part of an 

 organized body? If we grant the Darwinians the 

 body to start with, how is chance variation going 

 to give it an eye or an ear, or its organs of secretion, 

 and the like? Could any possible number of hit- 

 and-miss variations give it one of these things? 

 And during their incipient stages, of what advan- 

 tage are they to the organism? How did an eyeless 

 organism chance to vary toward an eye? \Vho or 

 what said "eye"? What put the organism in mind 

 of it? Its needs? But would it not be very useful 

 sometimes for an animal to be able to live without 

 air or water? Yet they develop no organs that en- 

 able them to do it. They have needs only because 

 they are living, developing beings. Natural selec- 

 tion can work only when there is struggle or living 

 competition. It cannot create the current by which 

 it profits. 



III. SPECULATION AND EXPERIMENT 



There are two ways of attacking a problem, the 

 speculative way and the experimental way. The 

 ancient observers almost invariably chose the 

 former way. This is the way of children and of all 

 primitive peoples, and of the larger part of man- 

 kind in our own day. It is the natural way. The 



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