250 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



Organs of extreme Perfection and Complication 



To suppose that the eje with all its inimitable con- 

 trivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, 

 for admitting different amounts of light, and for the 

 correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could 

 have been formed bj natural selection, seems, I freely 

 confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first 

 said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, 

 the common-sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; 

 but the old saying of Vox populi vox Dei, as every phi- 

 losopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason 

 tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and 

 imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown 

 to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is 

 certainly the case; if, further, the eye ever varies and the 

 variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; 

 and if such variations should be useful to any animal 

 under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of 

 believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed 

 by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagina- 

 tion, should not be considered as subversive of the the- 

 ory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly 

 concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I 

 may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in 

 which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiv- 

 ing light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensi- 

 tive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated 

 and developed into nerves, endowed with this special 

 sensibility. 



In searching for the gradations through which an 

 organ in any species has been perfected, we ought 



