96 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



the one that he had lost ; and when, with advancing 

 skill, and in default of being able to find the exact 

 thing he wanted, he took at length to making a jemmy 

 for himself, he would imitate the latest and most per- 

 fect adaptation, which would thus be most likely to 

 be preserved in the struggle of competitive forms. 

 Let this process go on for countless generations, 

 among countless burglars of all nations, and may we 

 not suppose that a jemmy would be in time arrived 

 at, as superior to any that could have been designed 

 as the effect of the Niagara Falls is superior to the 

 puny efforts of the landscape gardener ? " 



For the moment I will pass over the obvious retort 

 that there is no sufficient parallelism between bodily 

 organs and mechanical inventions to make a denial of 

 design in the one involve in equity a denial of it in 

 the other also, and that therefore the preceding para- 

 graph has no force. A man is not bound to deny 

 design in machines wherein it can be clearly seen 

 because he denies it in living organs where at best it 

 is a matter of inference. This retort is plausible, but 

 in the course of the two next following chapters but 

 one it will be shown to be without force; for the 

 moment, however, beyond thus calling attention to it, 

 I must pass it by. 



I do not mean to say that Mr. Darwin ever wrote 

 anything which made the futility of his contention as 

 apparent as it is made by what I have above put into 

 the month of his supposed follower. Mr. Darwin was 

 the Gladstone of biology, and so old a scientific hand 

 was not going to make things unnecessarily clear 



