RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 517 



tion of the watch picked up on the heath by the passing traveler, he points out 

 that the evidence of design is certainly not lessened if it be found that the watch 

 was so constructed that, in course of time, it produced another watch like itself. 

 He was thinking not of evolution, but of the ordinary production of each genera- 

 tion of animals from the preceding. But his answer can be pushed a step further, 

 and we may with equal justice remark that we should certainly not believe it a 

 proof that the watch had come into existence without design if we found that it 

 produced in course of time not merely another watch but a better. It would be- 

 come- more marvelous than ever if we found provision thus made, not merely for 

 the continuance of the species, but for the perpetual improvement of the species. 

 It is essential to animal life that the animal should be adapted to its circum- 

 stances; if, besides provision for such adaptation in each generation, we find 

 provision for still better adaptation in future generations, how can it be said that 

 the evidences of design are diminished ? Or take any separate organ, such as 

 the eye. It is impossible not to believe, -until it be disproved, that the eye 

 was intended to see with. We cannot say that light was made for the eye, be- 

 cause light subserves many other purposes besides that of enabling eyes to see. 

 But that the eye was intended for light there is so strong a presumption that it 

 cannot easily be rebutted. If, indeed, it could be shown that eyes fulfilled sev- 

 eral other functions, or that species of animals which always lived in the dark 

 still had fully-formed eyes, then we might say that the connection between the 

 eye of the animal and the light of heaven was accidental. But the contrary is 

 notoriously the case — so much the case that some philosophers have maintained 

 that the eye was formed by the need for seeing, a statement which I need take no 

 trouble to refute, just as those who make it take no trouble to establish, I will 

 not say its truth, but even its possibility. But the fact, if it be a fact, that the eye 

 was not originally as well adapted to see with as it is now, and that the power 

 of perceiving light and of things in the light grew by degrees, does not show, nor 

 even tend to show, that the eye was not intended for seeing with. 



The fact is that the doctrine of evolution does not affect the substance of 

 Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out remain 

 marks of design still, even if we accept the doctrine of evolution to the full. 

 What is touched by this doctrine is not the evidence of design but the mode in 

 which the design was executed. Paley, no doubt, wrote on the supposition 

 (and at that time it was hardly possible to admit any other supposition) that we 

 must take animals to have come into existence very nearly such as we now 

 know them : and his language, on the whole, was adapted to that supposition. 

 But the language would rather need supplementing than changing to make it 

 applicable to the supposition that animals were formed by evolution. In the 

 one case the execution follows the design by the effect of a direct act of cre- 

 ation; in the other case the design is worked out by a slow process. In the one 

 case the Creator made the animals at once such as they now are; in the other 

 case he impressed on certain particles of matter, which, -either at the beginning 

 or at some point in the history of his creation, he endowed with life, such inher- 



