STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 99 



no small measure to the judgment with which he kept 

 his meaning dark when a less practised hand would 

 have thrown light upon it. There can, however, be no 

 question that Mr. Darwin, though not denying pur- 

 posiveness point blank, was trying to refer the develop- 

 ment of the eye to the accumulation of small accidental 

 improvements, which were not as a rule due to effort 

 and design in any way analogous to those attendant on 

 the development of the telescope. 



Though Mr. Darwin, if he was to have any point 

 of difference from his grandfather, was bound to make 

 his variations accidental, yet, to do him justice, he 

 did not like it. Even in the earlier editions of the 

 " Origin of Species," where the " alterations " in the 

 passage last quoted are called " accidental " in express 

 terms, the word does not fall, so to speak, on a strong 

 beat of the bar, and is apt to pass unnoticed. Besides, 

 Mr. Darwin does not say point blank "we may be- 

 lieve," or " we ought to believe ; " he only says " may 

 we not believe ? " The reader should always be on his 

 guard when Mr. Darwin asks one of these bland and 

 child-like questions, and he is fond of asking them; 

 but, however this may be, it is plain, as I pointed out 

 in "Evolution Old and New"* that the only "skill," 

 that is to say the only thing that can possibly involve 

 design, is "the unerring skill" of natural selection. 



In the same paragraph Mr. Darwin has already 



5§iid : " Further, we must suppose that there is a power 



represented by natural selection or the survival of the 



fittest always intently watching each slight altera- 



* P.age 9. 



