2 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



of that opinion which is now supposed to be fatal to a 

 purposive view of animal and vegetable organs. I refer 

 to the theory of evolution or descent with modification. 



Let me state the question more at large. 



When we see organs, or living tools — for there is no 

 well-developed organ of any living being which is not 

 used by its possessor as an instrument or tool for the 

 effecting of some purpose which he considers or has 

 considered for his advantage — when we see living tools 

 which are as admirably fitted for the work required of 

 them, as is the carpenter's plane for planing, or the 

 blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the hammering of 

 iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion 

 ehaU we adopt concerning them ? 



Shall we hold that they must have been designed or 

 contrived, not perhaps by mental processes indistin- 

 guishable from those by which the carpenter's saw or 

 the watch has been designed, but still by processes 

 so closely resembling these that no word can be found 

 to express the facts of the case so nearly as the 

 word "design"? That is to say, shall we imagine 

 that they were arrived at by a living mind as the result 

 of scheming and contriving, and thinking (not without 

 occasional mistakes) which of the courses open to it 

 seemed best fitted for the occasion, or are we to regard 

 the apparent connection between such an organ, we will 

 say, as the eye, and the sight which is affected by it, as 

 in no way due to the design or plan of a living intelli- 

 gent being, but as caused simply by the accumulation, 

 one upon another, of an almost infinite series of small 

 pieces of good fortune ? 



