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CHAPTER VI. 



STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE (continued). 



So much for the older view ; and now for the more 

 modern opinion. According to Messrs. Darwin and 

 Wallace, and ostensibly, I am afraid I should add, a 

 great majority of our most prominent biologists, the 

 view taken by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck is not a 

 sound one. Some organisms, indeed, are so admirably 

 adapted to their surroundings, and some organs dis- 

 charge their functions with so much appearance of 

 provision, that we are apt to think they must owe 

 their development to sense of need and consequent 

 contrivance, but this opinion is fantastic ; the appear- 

 ance of design is delusive; what we are tempted to see 

 as an accumulated outcome of desire and cunning, we 

 should regard as mainly an accumulated outcome of 

 good luck. 



Let us take the eye as a somewhat crucial example. 

 It is a seeing-machine, or thing to see with. So is a 

 telescope ; the telescope in its highest development is 

 a secular accumulation of cunning, sometimes small, 

 sometimes great ; sometimes applied to this detail of 

 the instrument, and sometimes to that. lb is an 



