ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 815 



admired constructions were results that remained, instead 

 of preconceptions executed all at once; if they seem 

 chefs-d'oeuvre of workmanship solely because Nature, 

 like an artist careful of his reputation, has exhibited 

 only her best works, and has destroyed all her inferior 

 ones? 



In fact, Darwin assures us the eye was constructed by 

 endless selection on the part of Nature, who, commencing 

 operations on a mere nerve sensitive to the rays of sun- 

 light, by ever preserving those individuals with the 

 slightest perceptible improvement in the organ after this 

 rudimentary stage, at length perfected an instrument so 

 indispensable for the needs of most animals. The im- 

 provements in all organs were made by Nature, herself 

 in reality of most uninventive genius, but who always 

 acted on the simple rule, which cost her the least possible 

 trouble, of selecting those who by chance had already 

 got an advantage in any of these organs, and entrusting 

 to them the honour and responsibility of continuing the 

 species together with the acquired advantage. And this 

 simple method, requiring so little reflection or genius, 

 this rule of thumb so to speak, if invariably acted upon, 

 and especially if it is carried out faithfully for countless 

 ages, seems almost adequate to accomplish the final marvel. 

 Let Nature but favour and keep the best specimens of 

 her species, and ever drop the inferior .ones, and at the 

 end of ten thousand or a hundred thousand years, she 

 will have some surprising and most select results to 

 show. The perfect result which now so much astonishes 

 us in the human eye, is but the final sum of an infinite 

 series of small incremental advantages acquired in this 

 way during the countless ages since the first germinal 

 eye mysteriously appeared in the starfish or mollusc. It 

 is true that Nature, having learned her art, now does her 



