The Question at Issue gt 
his supposed follower. Mr. Darwin was the Gladstone of 
biology, and so old a scientific hand was not going to make 
things unnecessarily clear unless it suited his convenience. 
Then, indeed, he was like the man in “ The Hunting of 
the Snark,” 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 per- 
fected 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 men? 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 be- 
neath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be con- 
tinually changing 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 watching 
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 multiplied 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 
