STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 97 



unless it suited his convenience. Then, indeed, he 

 was like the man in " The Hunting of the Soark," 

 who said, "I told you once, I told you twice, what 

 I tell you three times is true." That what I have 

 supposed said,' however, above about the jemmy is 

 no exaggeration of Mr. Darwin's attitude as regards 

 design in organism will appear from the passage about 

 the eye already referred to, which it may perhaps be 

 as well to quote in full. Mr. Darwin says : — 



" It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye 

 to a telescope. "We know that this instrument has 

 been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the 

 highest human intellects, and we naturally infer that 

 the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous 

 process. But may not this inference be presumptuous ? 

 Have we any right to assume that the Creator works 

 by intellectual powers like those of man ? If we must 

 compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in 

 imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, 

 with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then sup- 

 pose every part of this layer to be continually chang- 

 ing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of 

 different densities and thicknesses, placed at different 

 distances from each other, and with the surfaces of 

 each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must 

 suppose that there is a power always intently watch- 

 ing each slight accidental alteration in the transparent 

 layers, and carefully selecting each alteration which, 

 under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in any 

 degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We must 

 suppose each new state of the instrument to be multi- 



G 



