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speak of 



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S 



* 







Ch. XLIIL] 



THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION. 



491 



pictures of external objects witli optic nerves to convey 



these images to 



the brain, it is suggested that we 



may 



understand how this perfect organ may have been ^ formed 

 by Natural Selection ' if we can only find in nature a series 

 of animals which have organs of vision exhibiting all the 

 intermediate .grades of structure between the two extreme 

 forms above mentioned. But in reality it cannot be said 

 that we obtain any insight into the nature of the forces 

 by which a higher grade of organisation or instinct is evolved 

 out of a lower one by becoming acquainted with the gra- 

 dational forms or states which have been passed through 

 during the transmntation. Even if we could discover geo- 

 logical evidence that every modification between a mere 

 power of sensation like that of a sponge and the intelligence 

 of an elephant had been represented by every intermediate 

 degree of instinct and capacity, and that beings endowed 

 with faculties more and more perfect had succeeded each 

 other in chronological order according to their relative 

 perfection, like the successive stages in the development 

 of the embryo from a simple germ-cell to the infant 

 mammifer, still the mystery of creation would be as great, 

 and as much beyond the domain of science, as ever. It is 

 when there is a change from an inferior being to one of 

 superior grade, from a humbler organism to one endowed 

 with new and more exalted attributes, that we are made 

 to feel that no modification of a progenitor, no principle 

 of inheritance, can explain the phenomenon. The ancestor 

 could not bequeath to its posterity that which it did not 

 possess itself, still less could the causes determining the 

 ^ survival of the fittest ^ give origin to individuals more 

 fit to occupy a conspicuous place in the system of nature 

 than any which had preceded them. 



The author, however, of the ^ Eeign of Law ' has by no 

 means argued, like the majority of Mr. Darwin's opponents, 

 as if nothing had been gained" by the theory of Natural 

 Selection, merely because this principle may have had func- 

 tions assigned to it far higher than it can possibly discharge. 

 The real question at issue— that on which the ' Origin of 

 Species ' has thrown so much light — is the same as that 



