84 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



admirable example of design ; nevertheless, as I said in 

 " Evolution Old and New," he who made the first rude 

 telescope had probably no idea of any more perfect 

 form of the instrument than the one he had himself 

 invented. Indeed, if he had, he would have carried 

 his idea out in practice. He would have been unable 

 to conceive such an instrument as Lord Eosse's ; the 

 design, therefore, at present evidenced by the telescope 

 was not design all on the part of one and the same 

 person. Nor yet was it unmixed with chance ; many 

 a detail has been doubtless due to an accident or coin- 

 cidence which was forthwith seized and made the best of. 

 Luck there always has been and always will be, until all 

 brains are opened, and all connections made known, but 

 luck turned to account becomes design; there is, indeed, 

 if things are driven home, little other design than this. 

 The telescope, therefore, is an instrument designed in 

 all its parts for the purpose of seeing, and, take it 

 all round, designed with singular skill. 



Looking at the eye, we are at first tempted to think 

 that it must be the telescope over again, only more 

 so ; we are tempted to see it as something which has 

 grown up little by little from small beginnings, as the 

 result of effort well applied and handed down from 

 generation to generation, till, in the vastly greater time 

 during which the eye has been developing as compared 

 with the telescope, a vastly more astonishing result 

 has been arrived at. We may indeed be tempted to 

 think this, but, according to Mr. Darwin, we should be 

 wrong. Design had a great deal to do with the tele- 

 scope, but it had nothing or hardly anything whatever 



