98 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



plied by the million, and each to be preserved till 

 a better be produced, and then the old ones to be 

 destroyed. In living bodies variation will cause the 

 slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost 

 infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with un- 

 erring skill each improvement. Let this process go 

 on for millions on millions of years, and during each 

 year on millions of individuals of many kinds ; and may 

 we not believe that a living optical instrument might 

 thus be formed as superior to one of glass as the works 

 of the Creator are to those of man ? * 



Mr. Darwin does not in this passage deny design, or 

 cunning, point blank; he was not given to denying 

 things point blank, nor is it immediately apparent that 

 he is denying design at all, for he does not emphasize 

 and call attention to the fact that the variations on 

 whose accumulation he relies for his ultimate specific 

 difference are accidental, and, to use his own words, in 

 the passage last quoted, caused by variation. He does, 

 indeed, in his earlier editions, call the variations " acci- 

 dental," and accidental they remained for ten years, 

 but in 1869 the word "accidental" was taken out. 

 Mr. Darwin probably felt that the variations had been 

 accidental as long as was desirable ; and though they 

 would, of course, in reality remain as accidental as ever, 

 still, there could be no use in crying " accidental varia- 

 tions " further. If the reader wanted to know whether 

 they were accidental or no, he had better find out for 

 himself. Mr. Darwin was a master of what may be 

 called scientific chiaroscuro, and owes his reputation in ■ 

 * Origin of Species, ed. i, pp. 188, 189. 



